The Scientific Advisory Council
Our members
Find out more about the current members who are part of the Scientific Advisory Council.
Veronique Kiermer (Secretary)
Chief Scientific Officer PLOS (ex officio)
Véronique Kiermer is the Chief Scientific Officer at PLOS, having joined as Executive Editor in 2015. She oversees the editorial department and the development of services, products and policies to promote open science. Before joining PLOS, she was Executive Editor and Director of Author and Reviewer Services for Nature Publishing Group where she oversaw editorial and research integrity policies across the Nature journals. She started her career in publishing in 2004 as the founding Chief Editor of Nature Methods.
Véronique has a PhD in molecular biology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Gladstone Institutes, University of California, San Francisco. She also worked on gene therapy projects in the biotechnology industry in the Bay Area before moving into publishing. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of Keystone Symposia and ORCID, and on the steering committee of PREreview.
Simine Vazire (Chair)
University of Melbourne, Australia
Simine Vazire is a professor in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has two lines of research. One examines people’s self-knowledge of their personality and behaviour and another line of research examines the individual and institutional practices and norms in science, and the degree to which these norms encourage or impede self-correction and credibility. She is Editor-in-Chief of Collabra: Psychology and has served as an editor at several other journals.
She is a board member of the Public Library Of Science and the Berkeley Institute for Transparency in the Social Sciences, was a member of the US National Academy of Science study committee on replicability and reproducibility, and co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS).
Emma Archer
Professor, Department of Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, South Africa
Emma Archer is a Professor in Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Pretoria, teaching in the areas of climate and managed ecosystems. Her research focus is largely on drylands, with experience throughout the SADC region and on the continent.
Her two main study sites are the southern Waterberg, Limpopo Province; and the eastern Karoo; in South Africa. She is active in international assessments, including work on certain of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) assessments, on GEO-6, on the IUFRO Forests and Water assessment, as well as the 2021 joint IPBES/IPCC report.
Israel Borokini
Assistant Professor Department of Ecology, Montana State University, United States
Dr. Israel Borokini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, Montana, United States. His research focuses on combining ecological, geospatial, genomic, and phylogenetic data to elucidate the patterns of plant community assemblages and biodiversity across multiple scales and the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that generate and maintain them. He heads the Conservation Ecology and Biogeography lab at MSU where students and postdoctoral scholars are mentored to carry out relevant scientific investigations and grow their careers.
Dr. Borokini completed his Ph.D. in the Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Originally from Nigeria, he has published over 60 papers focusing on conservation and landscape genetics, species distribution modeling, invasion ecology, conservation science, and Indigenous and local knowledge. He also listed two species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is a co-author of the IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species global assessment. He is an Associate Editor for two scientific journals and he has peer reviewed over 100 manuscripts for several journals.
Leo Anthony Celi
Clinical Research Director and Senior Research Scientist, Laboratory for Computational Physiology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States
Leo Anthony Celi is currently the Clinical Research Director and Senior Research Scientist at the Laboratory for Computational Physiology at MIT and a practicing intensivist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Dr. Celi’s work focuses on scaling clinical research to be more inclusive through open access data and software, particularly for limited resource settings; identifying bias in the data to prevent them from being encrypted in models and algorithms; and redesigning research using the principles of team science and the hive learning strategy.
Dr. Celi completed his medical degree at the University of the Philippines, followed by postgraduate training in internal medicine, critical care medicine, infectious diseases and biomedical informatics at Cleveland Clinic, Harvard, Stanford and MIT. He has published numerous papers in machine learning not just in critical care medicine but across different specialties such as ophthalmology, radiology, surgery, nursing, pharmacy and bioethics, among others
Gregory Copenhaver
Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Convergent Science, Department of Biology, University of North Carolina, United States
Gregory P. Copenhaver shares joint appointments as a Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Biology and Professor in the Integrative Program for Biological and Genome Sciences (IBGS) at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is also a Distinguished Adjunct Professor at Fudan University in Shanghai. Greg’s research focuses on chromosome dynamics and the mechanisms of inheritance. He is an Associate Member of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, the UNC Center for Bioethics and the Curriculum in Genetics.
Greg obtained his BS (with high distinction) from University of California Riverside in 1990 and his PhD in Biology and Biomedical Sciences from the Washington University in St. Louis in 1996. He completed his postdoctoral studies in Genetics at The University of Chicago in 2001. He served as the Director of Graduate Studies (Biology – MCDB) at UNC for 10 years and currently serves as Editor-in-Chief for PLOS Genetics. In 2019 he was elected as a Fellow of the Linnean Society and in 2021 he was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In addition, he co-founded the biotechnology company Chromatin Inc.
Sarah de Rijcke
Professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, Leiden University, Netherlands
Sarah de Rijcke is a professor of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS) at Leiden University. Her work examines the interactions between science governance and knowledge creation. Sarah is a member of the Engagement & Inclusion and Evaluation & Culture focal areas. Between 2019 and 2023, she served as scientific director of CWTS.
Sarah recurrently acts as expert advisor in European and global science policy initiatives, for instance as part of a high-level UNESCO Expert Group that wrote a global recommendation on Open Science (2020-2021). She serves as board member of the Netherlands Graduate Research School of Science, Technology and Modern Culture (WTMC) and as a council member of the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST). She is a member of multiple scientific advisory boards in Europe, including those of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, and the Munich Center for Technology in Society (TU Munich).
Fernan Federici
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and iBio Millenium Institute, Chile
Dr. Fernan Federici is an assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and iBio Millenium Institute. He studied two years of Agricultural Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, received his B.S. in Biology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Fernan has worked as a junior research assistant at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and as an international visiting fellow at OpenPlant Centre at the University of Cambridge. His main interest is understanding emergent pattern formation in biological systems. His group and collaborators apply synthetic biology tools and biophysical modeling to address these questions in bacterial populations.
He has been a champion of Open Science in a number of areas including protocols and reagents, where he contributes to Reclone (the Reagent Collaboration Network). Fernan’s research group also works on the promotion and development of Free/Libre Open Source technologies for research and education in molecular biology and bioengineering. The group is part of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware community (GOSH) and the CYTED-reGOSH network for open technologies in Latin America.
Direk Limmathurotsakul
Head of Microbiology, Mahidol University, Thailand
Direk Limmathurotsakul is the Head of Microbiology at Mahidol-Oxford Tropical Medicine Research Unit (MORU), Mahidol University (http://www.tropmedres.ac). He led a series of clinical and epidemiological studies on melioidosis (a tropical infectious disease caused by Gram-negative bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei) and antimicrobial resistance in low and middle-income countries.
Direk chairs International Melioidosis Network (www.melioidosis.info and https://groups.google.com/g/melioidosis). Direk is a board member of Surveillance and Epidemiology of Drug-resistant Infections Consortium (SEDRIC). Direk advocates the concept of ‘antibiotic footprint’ as a tool to communicate to the public the magnitude of antibiotic use (www.antibioticfootprine.net). To support communication with lay people and solve a problem of jargon surrounding AMR in local languages, Direk also initiated the AMR Dictionary (www.amrdictionary.net).
Kui Muraya
Advocate for equity, diversity, and accountability in global health partnerships, Kenya
Dr. Kui Muraya is an afro-optimist and a gender equity champion. She is a senior gender and health systems researcher with over 15 years’ experience in qualitative social science research. She is also a senior fellow of the Aspen New Voices Fellowship – awarded in recognition of her strong advocacy around gender equity and social justice more broadly.
Kui was also a fellow of The Initiative to Develop African Research Leaders (IDeAL) from 2017-2019. Until September 2022, she led the gender and health research portfolio at the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme. In recent years Kui has been an active voice in the Decolonizing Global Health Movement, advocating for equity, diversity, and accountability in global health partnerships; and in the way we undertake and fund health research.
Emily Sena
Chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Professor Emily Sena holds a personal chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in the validity of preclinical research and is a passionate advocate for open science. Her research interests are in the use of meta-research approaches (research on research) to drive improvements in the validity, transparency, reporting and reproducibility of primary research using laboratory models of human diseases. Her work has informed laboratory practice guidelines, editorial policy and clinical trials design.
Emily was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Open Science and is on the managing board of PCI Registered Reports and convenor of CAMARADES – an international collaboration that supports, advances and undertakes systematic reviews of preclinical research. She also co-founded and was co-convenor of the Edinburgh Race Equality Network, now convenes the University of Edinburgh Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee. She is highly committed to engendering and facilitating an anti-racist culture across campus, and diversity and inclusivity in academia.
Tracey Weissgerber
Berlin Institute of Health at Charité, QUEST Center for Responsible Research Group Leader, Germany
Tracey Weissgerber leads the Meta-research and Automated Screening Research Group in the QUEST Center for Responsible Research at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. Her team’s meta-research on improving data visualization, transparency and reporting quality have led to policy changes in many journals.
She also organizes ScreenIT, an international group of scientists and software developers who have created tools to screen preprints and papers for beneficial practices or common problems. These tools were used to screen and post public reports on almost 24,000 bioRxiv and medRxiv COVID-19 preprints during the pandemic. Dr. Weissgerber is also working on several projects to improve methodological reporting and encourage authors to share reusable step-by-step protocols.
Keith Yamamoto
Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy, UCSF, Director, UCSF Precision Medicine, Professor, Cellular & Molecular Pharmacology, University of California, United States
Keith Yamamoto received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University. At UCSF, he has served in several significant leadership roles including chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, vice dean for research in the School of Medicine, and vice chancellor for research.
Keith has also chaired or served on numerous national committees focusing on a wide range of policy and education efforts for researchers and the public. He chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences and sits on both the National Academy of Medicine Executive Committee and the National Academy of Sciences Division of Earth and Life Studies Advisory Committee. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.