Four years ago, the late Jon Tennant, who was a significant contributor to the Open Science movement and a friend and colleague to the ScienceOpen team, interviewed people on ScienceOpen’s behalf from around the world who were active supporters of making science more open. This year, we got back in touch with several of the interviewees to get their opinion on the current status of Open Science in 2020. We heard from Dr. Joanne Kamens, Executive Director of Addgene, Professor Dr. Samir Hachani at Algiers II University, and Dr. Chris Hartgerink, Executive Director of Liberate Science GmbH. We also received an interesting update on the state of Open Science in Indoensia from Dr. Dasapta Erwin Irawan. Where do you think Open Science is heading in 2020? Share your thoughts with us! Here are our Open Science Stars’ responses:
Open science is a rapidly evolving field, with a huge diversity of actors involved. We want to highlight some of the superstars helping to spearhead the evolution of scholarly communication, who are real positive forces for change. The first of these is with Joanne Kamens PhD, who currently is the Executive Director for Addgene, a repository for the life sciences. We asked her about open science, the impact this can have on diversity in research, and the value of repositories. Here’s her story!
Hi Joanne! So can you tell us a little bit about your background to get things started?
After graduating University of Pennsylvania I went directly to graduate school in the Harvard Medical School Division of Medical Sciences where I received a PhD in genetics. For you historians, it was the first year that the Division existed allowing students to move around PIs in many departments. I defended my thesis while 6 months pregnant and had my son while still working in that lab. I had a great mentor in Dr. Roger Brent (now at the Fred Hutchinson Center in Seattle). I studied transcription using yeast and helped demonstrate that an acidic domain of the Rel protein was activating when brought in proximity to the promoter region. Again for historical perspective, PCR was invented while I was in grad school and I got to beta test the first MJ research PCR machine (M worked on my floor) which had no outsides. Roger Brent’s lab was one of the labs that created the yeast two-hybrid screening system and I have always been a lover of molecular biology technology which serves me well at Addgene.
