Dr Ross Wilkinson

Better Data for Better Research: ANDS as a partner

The arguments around improved data practise are clear: better research, more efficient research, more defensible research, and better informed policy outcomes. However improved data doesn't happen by chance - it needs thoughtful processes, automated rich metadata capture, appropriate infrastructure, rich connection, and an improved set of tools for use.
Data volume is increasing, but equally data variety and data velocity is increasing. They are each big challenges, but also the opportunities to explore problems in completely different ways means the opportunities are increasing. Educators can explore data "in the large", policy makers can be informed by fine grained data outcomes based on public models, and researchers can address research questions not previously possible.
Australia is in an excellent position to take up these opportunities, and its infrastructure is world-class. To grasp these opportunities needs rich partnerships between researchers, their institutions, their infrastructure providers, both technical and information, and national organisations such as RDSI, Nectar, TERN, IMOS, and ANDS. ANDS has worked hard at partnering with institutions and infrastructure providers. This talk will illustrate the research data challenges, the research data opportunities, and the research data partnerships that can help grasp the opportunities of a richer data world.

Dr Ross Wilkinson's Biography
Dr Ross Wilkinson is the Executive Director of the Australian National Data Service, dedicated to enabling more researchers re-use data more often.
His research career commenced with his Ph. D. in mathematics at Monash University before researching in computer science at La Trobe University, RMIT and at CSIRO. Some of his areas of research have been document retrieval effectiveness, structured documents retrieval, and most recently on technologies that support people to interact with their information environments. He has published over 90 research papers, has served on many program committees and was a program co-chair for both SIGIR’96 and SIGIR’98.
He is now leading the Australian National Data Service creating tools, information, frameworks and the skills to enable Australia’s researchers to more effectively use and re-use research data, wherever it comes from.