I have been involved in chemical databases and chemical information since the early 1970's. From the NIH/EPA/NIST mass spectral database to the NIH/EPA Chemical Information System (CIS) to the Open Source IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) I have seen the explosion of electronic information. This vast explosion of electronic information, coupled with the Internet has created the opportunity to connect these many, many silos and islands of data and information. Since what we are looking to access, analyze and understand is associated with a chemical, the ability of the InChI chemical identifier linking these sources is critical to progress. I am currently the Project Director of the InChI Trust, a non-profit UK charity that is responsible for the support and expansion of the Open Source InChI algorithm. Leaning the skills to find information and data is critical to all those students in chemistry. That is why I am so enthusiastic about being involved in this online intercollegiate course in Cheminformatics/Chemical Information Sciences.
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.
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.
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.
