Bios

Evan Hepler-Smith

Evan Hepler-Smith is a historian of science and technology. Currently, Evan is Ziff Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment; he holds a Ph.D. in History of Science from Princeton University. Evan studies the history of chemical information from the 19th century through the present day. His research shows, first, that debates over chemical nomenclature, notation, and information management have been central to the intellectual and institutional development of global chemistry. Second, he shows that century-old approaches to chemical information have shaped how digital chemical information is handled today. He is excited to bring this historical perspective to the OLCC collaboration.

Abhik Seal

I am a PHD (Chemical Informatics ) student at Indiana University Bloomington working with Prof David Wild  at the chemgenomics and cheminformatics lab .Before joining here I was a Banker at State Bank of India.

Jordi Cuadros

Jordi Cuadros is an Associate Professor at IQS Universitat Ramon Llull (Barcelona, Spain) where he teaches introductory courses of programming to students in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Industrial Engineering and Biotechnology degrees. He holds a PhD in chemistry and a second degree in Education and his research expands over the intersection between physical sciences, computers, education and data analytics. He has been involved in developing simulations for learning chemistry and physics and currently tries to place some light on the learning that takes place when students use interactive and open-ended applications.

Alex M. Clark

Founder of Molecular Materials Informatics, which is dedicated to bringing cheminformatics to modern computing platforms (mobile, web, cloud, etc.). Outspoken advocate for increased awareness of chemical information technology by experimental chemists, in order to make the results of their experiments usable by machine learning algorithms, as well as other expert humans. Card-carrying former experimental chemist, software engineer from a young age, with many years spent creating software for computer-aided drug design. For more information, see LinkedIn Profile and Cheminformatics 2.0 blog.

Ralph Stuart

Ralph has been the Chemical Hygiene Officer at Keene State College in Keene, NH since 2014. He graduated from Cornell University in 1979 and got his master's at the University of Vermont in 1989. He managed lab safety at UVM for 25 years and was the Chemical Hygiene Officer at Cornell for 3 years before moving to Keene State.

Xavier Prat-Resina

I am an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at The University of Minnesota Rochester's “Center for Learning Innovation”. I am interested in figuring out in what ways technology can help learning and it what ways it hinders it. I have authored several web platforms that make use of graphical interfaces to learn chemistry. Models 360 is a collection of several hundreds of molecules, where properties such as structural symmetry, vibrations and electrostatic maps can be displayed with the Jmol applet. More recently, I developed ChemEd X Data as a graphical tool to help students navigate through large amounts of chemical and physical data and build their own knowledge by figuring out on their own trends and exceptions. I am also interested in assessing how much learning or how different the learning is when we move from a face-to-face classroom environment to an interconnected computer environment. This is why I am thrilled to be part of the OLCC project and learning in what ways the new communication technologies can overcome the current barriers of our educational system.

Leah McEwen

Leah McEwen is the Programmatic Coordinator for the Edna McConnell Clark Physical Sciences eLibrary and the Chemistry Librarian at Cornell University.  Her background is in biochemistry and library science and she is responsible for library resources and specialized services supporting chemistry in all fields and science and technology studies at Cornell.  She has contributed to and served in advisory capacity for a number of information resources including the ACS Style Guide, the ACS CPT Guidelines for Bachelor’s Degree Programs, Cornell’s VIVO, and CAS’ SciFinder.  She is an active member of the Chemical Information Division of the American Chemical Society, most recently as Secretary as well as Program Chair, addressing a wide range of topical interests from open access to advanced training and education to intellectual property and licensing to data- and text-mining.  She is also a member of the ACS Joint Board-Council Committee on Publications, the adjoining Subcommittee on Copyright and the Chemical & Engineering News Editorial Board. 

Andrew Lang

Andrew SID LangAndrew Lang is a Professor of Mathematics and Chair of the Computing & Mathematics Department at Oral Roberts University. Lang has been involved in many Open Science Projects including The Open Notebook Science Challenge and the Blue Obelisk Movement, performs his research under Open Notebook Science Conditions, and publishes his results in Open Access journals. While trained as a mathematical physicist his current research group is focused on building Open Models based upon Open Data and Open Descriptors of physical-chemical properties such as melting point and solubility. 

Stuart Chalk

I am an Associate Professor Chemistry trained as an analytical chemist with expertise in flow analysis methodology and instrumentation.  Over the last 15 years I have morphed into a cheminformatician working on research projects to develop data standards (e.g. the Analytical Information Markup Language - AnIML, Common Standard for eXchange – CSX, Experiment Markup Language - ExptML), electronic laboratory notebooks (e.g. the Eureka Research Workbench), scientific ontologies (e.g. the Chemical Analysis Ontology – CAO), and scientific data representation.  My current projects include: REST API development for NIST-IUPAC solubility datasets, chemical property data extraction and annotation from PDF files, scientific data framework (SciDF) development, and the Chemical Analysis Metadata Platform (ChAMP).  I have expertise in XML and Markup Languages, XSLT/XPATH/SVG, RDF, JSON/JSON-LD, PHP, Javascript, MySQL, SPARQL, CSS, CMS’s, REST interfaces, API design and construction, schema design, ontology development and Fedora-Commons.

Robert E. Belford

  I am a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock with a focus on the use of computers in Chemical Education.  I am interested in how digital ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) are changing the way our society shares and communicates information, and the impact this is having on chemical education and the practice of science.  I currently serve as Chair of the ACS Division of Chemical Education's (CHED) Committee on Computers in Chemical Education (CCCE), and see the Cheminformatics OLCC as an opportunity for the CCCE to contribute to the advancement of science by providing a mechanism for the integration of these new and evolving technologies into the chemistry curriculum.