We are delighted to announce that yesterday our Deputy CEO & Chief Technical Officer, Ronan Byrne, has been elected to the Board of Directors of the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) Association.
The EOSC initiative has been proposed in 2016 by the European Commission as part of the European Cloud Initiative to build a competitive data and knowledge economy in Europe. The EOSC will offer 1.7 million European researchers and 70 million professionals in science, technology, the humanities and social sciences a virtual environment with open and seamless services for storage, management, analysis and re-use of research data, across borders and scientific disciplines by federating existing scientific data infrastructures, currently dispersed across disciplines and the EU Member States.
The EOSC Association held its first official General Assembly since becoming a legal entity where they elected its first President and Board of Directors. EOSC Association President, Karel Luyben, said in a statement: “It is truly an honour to be elected the first President of the EOSC Association. In my role as Chair of the EOSC Executive Board, I have had the great pleasure to work with a community that is as vibrant as it is diverse. Looking back on what we have achieved in Europe by working together – with the EOSC Declaration as an important milestone in 2017 – makes me proud to be part of this EOSC community. While recognising how far we have come, it is also clear that grand opportunities lie ahead.”
Speaking today, Ronan Byrne, said: “I am delighted to be elected as a member of the EOSC Association Board of Directors. I believe that the establishment of the EOSC Association and the advent of the EOSC Partnership is a most welcome and necessary development for open science, but also for European society generally.
I look forward to working collaboratively with its first President and the other Board Members to continue progress in the open science cloud space. We must continue to focus on this initiative which will further enable European scientists and researchers to tackle the grand challenges that we face in terms of climate, health, and societal wellbeing.”
Ronan has just concluded a two-year term as Ireland representative on the EOSC Governance Board. Ronan leads strategy development at HEAnet and a key pillar of the new HEAnet Strategy 2020-21 relates to research engagement and progression on our national open science ambitions.
Ronan’s career at HEAnet extends back to 2004 and he has overseen many large scale programmes over this time, including: development of the Schools Broadband Network; the Edugate national federated access service; establishment of an ICT Procurement Team that brokers in excess of €7m savings for the sector annually, and more recently, upgrade of national backbone network to 100Gb capacity.
HEAnet are involved in many international initiatives. Our CEO, Kerrie Power, was recently elected as a Board Member of GÉANT, you can read more it here.
