With generous support from Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance), and in celebration of the formation of RDA in Canada, we are pleased to announce that two, $5,000 awards have been granted to support travel to the RDA 20th Plenary Meeting to be held 21-23 March 2023 in Gothenburg, Sweden.
The winners of this year’s student travel award are Eshta Bhardwaj, an Information PhD student at the University of Toronto, and Ruby Lindsay, a MLIS student at the University of British Columbia.
Eshta is in her first year of doctoral study at the University of Toronto iSchool, supervised by Prof. Christoph Becker within the Digital Curation Institute. Her area of research focuses on the application of data curation in machine learning research. She is investigating the fairness, transparency, accountability, accessibility, documentation, and reuse for datasets used for predictive modeling. Eshta has an educational background in data science, analytics, and information visualization, with a passion for applying her skills to climate change governance and environmental research. She completed her Master’s of Arts in Information Systems and Technology at York University in April 2022, where she studied data analytics and provided a data pipeline for climate change research.
“[Attending RDA20] will enable me to engage with and contribute to the adoption of data curation practices for machine learning research and apply it to climate research. […] It will also offer the ability to become part of a global platform for interacting and collaborating with a community driven by innovation in data-related research. As part of the Digital Curation Institute at the Faculty of Information, I can apply my learnings from the RDA plenary to advance the interdisciplinary work between RDM and ML communities.”
Eshta Bhardwaj, 2023 WDS-ITO Student Travel Award Recipient
Ruby Lindsay is in the final semester of her Master’s of Library and Information Studies (MLIS) at the University of British Columbia iSchool. Throughout her graduate degree, Ruby has been motivated by interdisciplinary research and is keen to increase the interdisciplinary use of data. She is focused on improving the discoverability of data, particularly sensitive data and health data. Ruby is interested in pursuing avenues of work addressing open data, open access, research data management, and scholarly communication. She completed her Bachelor’s of Arts in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Saskatchewan in April 2021.
“My long-term career goal is to work in a position related to open access and RDM and doing so in an international setting is something I’m absolutely interested in. The Plenary would provide me with international perspectives and give me the opportunity to foster international collaborative relationships and learn from and with my mentors and peers.”
Ruby Lindsay, 2023 WDS-ITO Student Travel Award Recipient
Congratulations, Ruby and Eshta!
We received many inspiring applications from students across Canada in a variety of programs and career stages. Thank you to everyone who applied, we hope to offer similar opportunities in the future.
Additional Information:
- WDS-ITO Student Travel Support Fund
- RDA 20th Plenary Meeting – Gothenburg (Hybrid)
- ITO and GORC-WG at RDA20
- Digital Research Alliance of Canada (the Alliance)