Conference programme committee

Barbara Kieslinger

Dr. Barbara Kieslinger currently coordinates careables.org, an EC-funded project on open healthcare, which facilitates co-design, making and sharing of open, personalised healthcare for everyone. Barbara has extensive experience in international research project management and networking activities. Her research at the Centre for Social Innovation (Vienna, Austria) is focusing on citizen science and citizen innovation, open science and the relation between technological/digital and social innovations. Barbara also regularly serves as an external expert for the European Commission. In parallel, her entrepreneurial skills are deployed in the audio tech start-up proactivaudio.

Cissi Askwall

Cissi Askwall is the Secretary General of the Swedish non-profit association Vetenskap & Allmänhet, VA (Public & Science) since 2011. VA promotes dialogue and openness between the public and researchers, and develops new formats for science communication, public engagement and stakeholder involvement. Cissi previously worked as a news journalist at Swedish Radio and the national news agency TT. She has also been Communication Director at the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and at VA. She is Vice President of the European Science Engagement Association, EUSEA, Board Member of Örebro University and Research Committee Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry.

Dorte Riemenschneider

Dorte Riemenschneider joined the European Citizen Science Association at the beginning of 2018 and was appointed Managing Director at the end of 2018. She completed her Master of Science by Research in Potsdam, Germany, while focusing her research on citizen participation in urban development processes. Prior to joining the Citizen Science Community, she was professionally active in the management at the Museum of Islamic Art in Berlin and in citizens' movements and international non-profit organizations. At ECSA, she is particularly committed to the sustainable development of the European Platform for Citizen Science.

Egle Butkeviciene

Egle Butkeviciene is a full professor of Sociology and Vice-Dean for Research at Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities, Kaunas University of Technology. Egle conducts research on citizen science, open science, civic participation, social impact of technologies, social innovations, community development and social inclusion, environmental activism, and public policy. She has led and participated in a number of FP8 and H2020 projects and is involved in COST Actions “Empowering the next generation of social enterprise scholars” and “Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe”. Egle is/was a governmental expert at the EC H2020 Programme Committee for Societal Challenge 6 'Europe in a changing world – Inclusive, Innovative and Reflective Societies' and a member of Horizon 2020 Advisory Group on NMBP (Leadership in Enabling and Industrial Technologies).

Eva Méndez

Eva Méndez holds a PhD in Library and Information Sciences (LIS) and is an expert in metadata. She has been a lecturer at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), LIS department since 1997. Eva has been an active member of several international research teams, advisory boards and communities including DCMI, OpenAire, Metadata2020, RDA, etc. She has led, acted as advisor and taken part in several research projects in the fields related with standardization, metadata, semantic web, open data, digital repositories and libraries, and information policies for development in several countries. In November 2017, she was named “Open Data Champion” by SPARC Europe. She is currently Deputy Vice President for Scientific Policy-Open Science at UC3M and member of the EU-OSPP (European Open Science Policy Platform) on behalf of YERUN (Young European Research Universities Network). She was the OSPP chair for the 2^nd mandate of the platform.

Katrin Vohland

Katrin Vohland is Director General of the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM Vienna) since June 2020. Before, she headed the Research Department “Museum and Society” at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Research. Her main research interest is in the interface between science – especially biodiversity science – and different public audiences. She was active in the German Network for Biodiversity Research (NeFo) and investigated how scientific knowledge can be mainstreamed into policies as in the case of IPBES (Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services). Katrin is very active in developing citizen science as an integrative approach in Germany and Europe. She initiated the German citizen science platform including the development of quality criteria, she is chair of the European scientific network of the COST Action “Citizen Science to promote creativity, scientific literacy, and innovation throughout Europe“, and she was vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA).

Markus Weißkopf

Markus Weißkopf ist seit dem 1. Januar 2012 Geschäftsführer der Wissenschaft im Dialog gGmbH in Berlin. Er entwickelte mehrere neue Formate in der Wissenschaftskommunikation, u.a. den Science Slam, das Nachtcafé für Aufgeweckte, die Fishbowl-Diskussion oder die Crowdfunding-Plattform sciencestarter und initiierte das deutsche Wissenschaftsbarometer. Weiterhin ist er gemeinsam mit Elisabeth Hoffmann Gründer des Think Tanks “Siggener Kreis”, der regelmäßig Impulse zur Zukunft der Wissenschaftskommunikation veröffentlicht. Er studierte Politik und Management an den Universitäten Konstanz und Madrid. Nach seiner Arbeit als Organisationsberater in Konstanz baute er als Projektleiter und Geschäftsführer von 2007 bis Ende 2011 das Haus der Wissenschaft in Braunschweig auf. Seit 2014 ist er Mitglied des Boards der European Science Engagement Association und seit 2016 deren Präsident.

Muki Haklay

Muki Haklay is a Professor of Geographic Information Science at University College London (UCL). He is the founder and Co-director of the UCL Extreme Citizen Science group. The group has developed a range of technologies that can be used for participatory science and mapping, including the Sapelli data collection suite, and the GeoKey framework for the capture and management of participatory mapping information. In addition, he is co-founder and director of the social enterprise ‘Mapping for Change’, which provides services in participatory mapping and citizen science. He was an inaugural board member of the Citizen Science Association, and is the co-vice chair of the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA). He has an extensive experience in citizen science projects, including EveryAware (FP7 FET), Citizen Cyberlab (FP7 ICT) and EU-Citizen.Science (H2020 SwafS) among others.

Núria Castell

Dr. Núria Castell has PhD degree in Atmospheric Physics and currently holds a position as senior research scientist at the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU). Her current research focuses in the exploitation of novel monitoring technologies to complement existing monitoring systems in the characterization and assessment of indoor and outdoor air pollution. She is passionate about engaging citizens in scientific activities and she is exploring new ways of using citizen science to both monitor the environment and increase environmental action.

Rosy Mondardini

Rosy’s background is in physics, she started her career as researcher at CERN and since 2004 she’s focussing on science for social change. From 2008 to 2015 she was Associate Director at the World Economic Forum, where she established and managed the Young Global Leaders Alumni community. In 2015, she joined the Citizen Cyberlab at University of Geneva, before taking up her current role in Zurich as Managing Director of the Citizen Science Center Zurich. Rosy in a very active member of the global CS community.

Steffen Fritz

Steffen Fritz is Deputy Program Director of the Ecosystem Services and Management (ESM) Program, and Centre Head of the Earth Observation and Citizen Science (EOCS) Research Group at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA). He is also the initiator and driving force behind Geo-Wiki.org and Geo-Wiki mobile, a global land cover validation tool based on Web 2.0 and crowdsourcing, and Principal Investigator of the ERC funded ''CrowdLand'' and H2020 funded ''LandSense'' and ''WeObserve'' projects, as well as many others. His research interests include crowdsourcing, volunteered geographical information, food security, global and regional vegetation monitoring, crop yield and crop acreage estimations of agricultural crops, serious gaming, gamification, in-situ data collection of land-use and land cover via mobile technologies, as well as citizen science for SDG monitoring and implementation.

Sven Schade

Sven Schade is a scientific officer at the European Commission's scientific and knowledge management service, the Joint Research Centre (JRC), with a background in geospatial information science and knowledge engineering. His research interests cover digital transformation of governance, multi-disciplinary interoperability, and public participation in science for policy – always with a view to improve inclusive and sustainable transitions.