Meet the people behind bdverse

Tomer (project founder and leader), is currently a post-doc in Yohay Carmel’s ecology lab at the Technion, following up on his PhD work in the field of biodiversity informatics. He has a master’s degree in Ecology from Ben Gurion University (where he studied landscape genetics with a focus on the wild Ass) and several years of experience as a knowledge management consultant.

Tomer’s research ties together three synergetic elements: ecological research, developing methodology and developing tools. The bdverse was born from a pressing need for a sustainable infrastructure that bridges between biodiversity data users and the R platform.

Yohay (project PI), is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Technion.

Since biodiversity big-data are prone to various data quality issues, which may invalidate its usage in research, we have embarked on a journey to develop a framework of tools for biodiversity data quality assessment (the bdverse). Enhancing the usability of biodiversity data will not only promote a more appropriate use of such data but will also improve our ability to address urgent conservation issues more accurately.

Vijay, is a Post Doctoral Researcher from India, currently with Florida Museum of Natural History. He has a Master's degree in Computer Science and PhD in Geography. He has been working in the field of Biodiversity Informatics for several years and his interest are mainly in Citizens Science and Biodiversity Data Visualization.

Vijay has been involved with bdverse from the beginning and has contributed to all aspects of bdverse from initial conceptualization, design, coding to mentoring Google Summer of Code students.

Thiloshon (Shiny lead), is a Software Engineer hailing from Colombo, Sri Lanka. He holds a bachelor's degree in Software Engineering from University of Westminster, UK. Thilo, leads a double life, as a Java Developer by day; working at WSO2 for FinTech solutions of European Banks, and as an R enthusiast by night; a life of open source.

Thilo joined bdverse as a Google Summer of Code student developer in 2017 and has been a student, contributor, mentor and now, a core member of bdverse team. All things Shiny of bdverse, is a magic of Thilo.

Povilas (R functionality lead) is a PhD candidate in biomedical data analysis expected to graduate in 2020. He is interested in statistical computing, computational data-analysis workflows and data-visualisation. When he is not working you can find him on stackoverflow.org where he is learning and helping others to learn new things about R or at the karate class.

Povilas joined bdverse in 2018 as Google Summer of Code student and since then he is perfecting data-analysis workflows of bdchecks and bdDwC.

Rahul is a Software Engineer from India who has a specialization in Data Analytics. He is pursuing computer science from Galgotias University, India. He loves to teach other students and conduct free workshops all over India. Besides his career, he loves to contribute to open-source.

Rahul joined bdverse as a Google Summer of Code student developer in 2019. During GSOC he develops an interactive shiny package that allows the user to visualize different aspects of bioDiversity data such as temporal, taxonomic and spatial without worrying about coding.