W Fleri Statement

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It would be a privilege to serve as the chair of the Governance Committee in 2019. In order to grow and maintain the trust of ESIP members and participants, it is critical that the organization’s governing documents (Constitution and Bylaws) be correctly implemented and, when changing circumstances dictate, be amended in a rigorous and comprehensive manner. Having spent time leading several volunteer nonprofit corporations, I have had the experience of reviewing, revising, and implementing such documents.

I am a professional project manager with over 20 years of experience in a variety of scientific domains, and I have developed a multidisciplinary background. I received a B.A. in Mathematics and Physics from Williams College, and my M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from Brown University. I performed postdoctoral work in paleoclimatology in the Geological Sciences Department at Brown, using pollen fossils and correlations between modern vegetation and climate to estimate Holocene climates in North America. I worked briefly in oil reservoir modeling before moving to a small aerospace firm in San Diego specializing in physics-based modeling and remote sensing. During my 17 years there, I transitioned into project management and later led the Software Engineering Group. In 2003, I became certified as a Project Management Professional (PMP) by the Project Management Institute. After 19 years in the earth and space science domains, I transitioned into the world of bioinformatics and big data, becoming the project manager of the Protein Data Bank (www.rcsb.org) at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, where I worked with Phil Bourne. In 2004, I became the project manager for the newly created Immune Epitope Database and Analysis Resource (www.iedb.org), a bioinformatics resource funded by the National Institute of Health that is freely available online for researchers to use to develop new vaccines, diagnostics, and therapeutics. In addition to my project management responsibilities, I managed a team of 12 scientific curators and headed up outreach efforts to the scientific community. I served in this capacity for 13 years before recently starting my own consulting practice in project management and project management coaching.

Although working in bioinformatics, I still maintained my long-time interest in earth science, space science, and energy. I first became involved with ESIP in 2013 and have participated in several clusters and working groups, most recently the Visioneers. I have found that informatics in earth science and biology share many common features and issues. I look forward to offering my knowledge and experience to ESIP’s important work.