The Global Biodata Coalition Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) provides advice to the GBC Board of Funders and the GBC Executive Director in all aspects of the development and implementation of the GBC’s scientific mission.
Nicola Mulder
Professor and Head, Computational Biology Division, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Interim Director, African Bioinformatics Institute
Prof Mulder heads the Computational Biology Division at UCT, leads the DS-I Africa eLwazi Open Data Science Platform and co-leads a Wellcome Discovery Data Integration Platform. She led the InterPro project at the EBI for 7 years, and subsequently the H3ABioNet African Bioinformatics Network which developed capacity for genomic data analysis for >10 years. Her research focuses on genetic determinants of disease, African genome variation, and microbial genomics. Her group provides bioinformatics services and training and develops algorithms and resources for African genomics. She sits on several international scientific advisory boards and is the interim Director for the African Bioinformatics Institute.
Jeff Christiansen
Director of Australian BioCommons
Dr. Jeff Christiansen is Director of Australian BioCommons, Australia’s national digital research infrastructure for molecular life science researchers in academia, government and industry. Jeff obtained his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Queensland with research focussed on cancer, molecular genetics and embryo development. He then moved to a postdoctoral position at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research in London, screening for novel genes with roles in embryonic brain development, before taking up a leadership role at the Edinburgh Mouse Atlas of Gene Expression (EMAGE), which was a pioneering first-of-its kind spatial transcriptomics atlas. Upon returning to Australia, he has had multiple community facing roles in various national infrastructure projects focussed on the developing national scale computational and bioinformatics systems to support life science research. In his current role, he leads Australian BioCommons and its national program of digital research infrastructure, partnerships, training and service delivery.
Eric Green
Chief Medical Officer, Illumina, Inc., USA
Dr Eric Green is the Chief Medical Officer at Illumina, a global leader in genomics committed to unlocking the power of the genome to improve human health. As Illumina’s medical leader, Dr Green is responsible for guiding global efforts to advance the clinical application of genomics, expand access to precision medicine, and increase diversity in genomic data to improve healthcare for people worldwide. Prior to joining Illumina, Dr Green was a genomics researcher and multi-decade leader at the National Human Genome Research Institute at the U.S. National Institutes of Health, including serving as the NHGRI Director for more than 15 years.
Roderic Guigó
Professor of Bioinformatics and Coordinator of the Bioinformatics and Genomics Programme at the Centre for Genomic Regulation
Prof. Roderic Guigó has close to 40 years of experience in research in computational biology. Since 2005 he chairs the Computational Biology of RNA Processing group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation. He is Bioinformatics professor at University Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona. His broad scientific interest is in the understanding of the encoding of functional information in biological sequences. He initiated GENCODE, the international effort to establish the reference gene and transcript annotation for the human and mouse genome. He is in the EGA Strategic Committee, and co-chair of the ethics committee for the Human Cell Atlas.
Namshik Han
Head of Computational Research & AI, Milner Therapeutics Institute, University of Cambridge, UK and Professor, Department of Quantum Information, Yonsei University, South Korea
Prof. Namshik Han is a Professor in the Department of Quantum Information at Yonsei University and Head of AI Research at the Milner Therapeutics Institute, University of Cambridge. He specialises in quantum information, artificial intelligence, computational biology, and multi-omics.
Varsha Khodiyar
Director, Echobyte Data Solutions, UK
Dr. Varsha Khodiyar, PhD, is a data curation, open science and research data sharing specialist with over two decades of experience across research and scientific publishing. Varsha has served on GBC’s Scientific Advisory Committee since 2021. Her work focuses on adoption of FAIR data management practices across the research community. Varsha obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Leicester before beginning her data curation career at University College London (UCL), working on the Human Genome Project and Gene Ontology annotation. She subsequently held data-focused roles at F1000Research and Springer Nature’s Scientific Data. She currently works in the pharmaceutical industry, advising on standards-based data management.
Gitte Neubauer
Founder and Managing Director, Cellzome, Germany
Dr. Gitte Neubauer is Vice President and Managing Director of GSK’s German R&D site, Cellzome. Gitte studied biochemistry at Imperial College, London. She then pursued a PhD in proteomics with Matthias Mann at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, where she later co-founded Cellzome in 2000. She built and led various groups, as well as drug discovery projects. In 2012, when Cellzome was acquired by GSK, Gitte took over as head of Cellzome. Under her leadership, Cellzome’s proteomics platform was transformed into a modern, multi-omics capability, integrating metabolomics, genomics, and spatial omics with advanced data analytics and artificial (AI) capabilities.
Guilherme Oliveira
Visiting Senior Professor, Department of Genetics, Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil, visiting scientist Federal University of Minas Gerais
Dr. Guilherme is a globally experienced scientific executive with a distinguished career spanning genomics, biodiversity science, infectious diseases, bioinformatics, and sustainable development.
Saurabh Raghuvanshi
Professor, Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India
Dr. Saurabh Raghuvanshi is a professor at the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi South Campus, New Delhi, India. He is a plant biologist with a strong expertise in biological data science and genomics. His research has contributed to plant genomics and regulatory biology, particularly in rice, as well as semantic digitization and computer-readable representation of experimental data. He was the founding Head of the Indian Biological Data Centre (IBDC), India’s first dedicated national life-science data centre, where he contributed to shaping national biological data infrastructure. A defining theme of his vision is Global Knowledge Discovery: building national life-science data infrastructures that make biological data discoverable, interoperable, contextualized, and reusable across borders, while preserving responsible national stewardship. He advocates an AI-ready biological data commons in which nationally generated data can contribute seamlessly to a connected global knowledge ecosystem.