The OpenCon Organizing Committee is involved in all aspects of the meeting, from creating the conference program to deciding which applicants are selected to attend. The Organizing Committee members are listed below:

	Guillermina Actis  I’m advisor on institutional development at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council of Argentina, CONICET. For the past year I’ve been involved in the implementation of the Open Access and Open Research Data Argentinian Law at CONICET. I’ve a BA in Political Science and have completed Master courses in Public Policy (Universidad Torcuato Di Tella) and another in Science, Technology and Society (Universidad Nacional de Quilmes). For the past two years I’ve been doing my dissertation’s research on the process that led to the OA and ORD public policy’s adoption in Argentina. I believe in the possibility of democratizing governmental institutions and promoting equity and inclusion through scientific and technological knowledge, therefore I work for the promotion of Open Science practices by advocating for the creation of institutional incentives that advance them.
	Penny Andrews  Penny Andrews is an interdisciplinary social sciences researcher at the Universities of Sheffield and Leeds, with interests including social media, populism, quantification of work, scholarly communication and politics fandom. They are interested in Open from a social justice and inclusion perspective, where a wider range of people being read and heard and valued is as important as being granted access by the great and the good.
	Ivonne Lujano I am a lecturer at the Autonomous University of the State of Mexico working to advance future teachers education. Since 2011 I have been strongly advocating for Open Access in Mexico and Latin America. First, in Redalyc (OA journals database) where I was in charge of journals evaluation department; and now as the ambassador of the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) in Latin America, where I currently collaborate with several universities and research centres, promoting best practice and transparency in journals. I am interested in journals evaluation systems in Latin America, because I firmly believe that if we want to democratize the current scholarly communication environment, the mechanisms to determine quality of journals such as the more traditional metrics, should be reviewed. Recently, with a colleague from Argentina, I published a paper on this issue; we hope our analysis contribute to improve national policies for journals.
	Thomas Hervé Mboa Nkoudou  I am the President of the Association for the Promotion of Open Science in Haiti and Africa (APSOHA), currently I am a PhD student in Information and Communication at Université Laval (Canada). My interest in openness is firstly about values like : sharing, community, inclusion, diversity, equity, cognitive justice. With these values, knowledges are Commons. That is why I am deeply engaged in Open access, to make African research more visible and accessible on the web, through the future Panafrican Instutionnal Repository.  As a teacher, I am promoting Open Education through OER and open practices, that is why I have created « La Fabrique des Ressources Educatives Libres » a platform where students and teachers have access to open textbooks."
	Naomi Penfold  I am Innovation Officer at eLife, a non-profit organisation working to accelerate discovery and to promote responsible behaviours in science. Through a PhD in neuroscience and exposure to the science policy world, I developed an interest in open science and supporting early-career researchers to work collaboratively and openly. My work for the eLife Innovation Initiative involves identifying and supporting people and projects improving research communication, from discovery and sharing to consumption and evaluation. I strongly believe in the potential of the web to make research a more equitable and effective enterprise, and in open (source and science) as an enabler of inclusive community governance, as well as to ensure successes can be widely adopted and built on by the whole community.
	Vinodh Ilangovan  I am a biomedical scientist at Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Goettingen.  Open Science helps in enhancing the reproducible nature of research products, hence I advocate for several open research practices including Open Access, Open Data and Open Peer Review. I believe, changes in existing scholarly evaluation procedures can advance “open”. I am interested in exploring indicators that will recognize the rigour and reproducibility of research article(s) or product(s) in addition to the contribution of individual researcher, resulting in better research evaluation.
	Erin McKiernan  Erin McKiernan is a professor in the Department of Physics, Biomedical Physics program at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City. She is a researcher in experimental and computational biophysics and neurophysiology, and an advocate for open access, open data, and open science. She is the founder of 'Why Open Research?' (whyopenresearch.org), an educational site for researchers to learn about sharing their work. She blogs at emckiernan.wordpress.com and you can follow her on twitter at @emckiernan13.
	Achintya Rao  I am a science communicator working for the CMS Collaboration at CERN, currently also pursuing a PhD in science communication from UWE Bristol in the UK. At CERN, I work with CERN’s IT and Scientific Information services as well as the CMS Collaboration’s scientists to build and operate the CERN Open Data portal (opendata.cern.ch). I also contribute to the Mozilla Science Lab as a mentor for their Working Open Workshops. I endeavour to make all aspects of my own research — from data and code to the act of authoring publications — as open and transparent as possible. I license most content I produce in my free time under liberal Creative Commons licences. I am particularly interested in the use of free and open-source software in the research process, and advocate for researchers moving away from proprietary tools as much as we can.
	Asura Enkhbayar  Asura Enkhbayar works as a data scientist in the #ScholCommLab at the Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and investigates the theoretical and philosophical bedrock of Scholarly Communication as part of his PhD. Asura is an outspoken advocate and supporter of Open Science. His efforts included the participation in the Open Access Network Austria (OANA) working group “Open Access and Scholarly Communication” which published the The Vienna Principles: A Vision for Scholarly Communication in the 21st Century. Furthermore, he has been a developer and member of Open Knowledge Maps since its foundation. Within Open * he is particularly interested in the role and importance of (very) early career researchers and students. You can find him online on Twitter and GitHub.
	Robin Champieux  Robin is the Research Engagement and Open Science Librarian at Oregon Health & Science University.  She became involved with the OpenCon community after attending the inaugural conference in Washington, D.C. in 2014.  There she learned that with the right information, enough practical pathways, and a supportive community, early career researchers have the potential to change the culture of scientific communication.  Because of Robin’s experience, the OHSU Library became an on-going sponsor of student scholarships to OpenCon, and she’ll be collaborating with regional OpenCon alumni and open advocates to organize a satellite event, OpenCon Cascadia, in Spring 2018.  In addition to sparking her strategies for making open science the norm at OHSU, Robin says that she continues to learn from and be inspired by the OpenCon community, especially its commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
	Ahmed Ogunlaja  Ahmed is a medical doctor and founder of Open Access Nigeria, an organization which advocates for policies that unlock research, scientific data and educational resources; as well as educate researchers, academics and the public about Open Science. He is mobilizing and organizing volunteers across Nigerian universities to engage with stakeholders and policymakers in academia and in government, with the aim of influencing behavior change and enacting policies that promote free online access to research and educational resources, in order to foster innovation and accelerate scientific discovery. In 2016, he was a recipient of the Mandela Washington Fellowship for Young African Leaders. He is interested in Open because of its social justice implications, and its potential to foster inclusive and sustainable development.
	Jessica Polka  Jessica Polka, PhD is Director of ASAPbio, a biologist-driven project to promote the productive use of preprints in the life sciences. Before becoming a visiting scholar at the Whitehead Institute, she performed postdoctoral research in the department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School following a PhD in Biochemistry from UCSF. Her interest in Open stems from a desire to make scientific research more efficient, productive, and inclusive. Jessica serves as president of the board of directors of Future of Research, a steering committee member of Rescuing Biomedical Research, a member of the NAS Next Generation Researchers Initiative, and a member of ASCB's public policy committee.
	Slobodan Radicev  Slobodan Radicev is early stage researcher affiliated with two universities, University of Novi Sad (Serbia) and University of Rome Tor Vergata (Italy). He has more than ten years of experience in various organizations connected with the university and research. Currently, Slobodan is governing board member of EuroScience. Before EuroScience he was two times elected as a president of the European Council of Doctoral Candidates and Junior Researchers. In the past five years, Slobodan was a guest speaker at many events related to young researchers in Europe and the US, he is also a member of organizing committees of several events each year. He becomes involved in OA community by the chance and he soon realizes how Open Access and in general Open Science is important for the science and society development. Slobodan is a co-founder of Open Access Academy and active supporter of many OA projects.
	Katerina Dima  I am a final year medical student from Greece, currently representing the International Federation of Medical Students' Associations - IFMSA as Liaison Officer in Medical Education, working in a variety of issues including Open Access, Open Data and Open Educational Resources. As an organization comprised of medical students all over the world, striving for equality and access to high quality medical education, we have been developing several actions: Whether it is advocating, through our own policies, and attending high level meetings, supporting and even co organizing OpenCon for a few years or building capacity among thousands of students to fight for Open Access themselves, IFMSA has constantly being in the frontline. OpenCon 2017 will be an incredible opportunity to shape our way forward and take better and stronger action!

Osman Aldirdiri, Sudan: Open Sudan

Staff Support

	Nick Shockey  Nick Shockey is the Director of Programs & Engagement for SPARC and founding Director of the Right to Research Coalition, an international alliance of student organizations that promote Open Access to the results of research through advocacy and education. Nick is responsible for growing SPARC’s engagement with members and the wider community, managing SPARC’s digital platforms, and developing initiatives across SPARC’s program areas. He also leads the organization of International Open Access Week and directs SPARC’s student program. Nick led the launch of the Right to Research Coalition in 2009 and has grown the organization to include more than 90 member student organizations, which collectively represent nearly 7 million students in over 100 countries around the world. In 2014, Nick led the launch of OpenCon.
	Nicole Allen  Nicole Allen is the Director of Open Education for SPARC. In this role she leads SPARC’s work to advance openness in education, with a dual focus on public policy and engaging the library community to advance this issue on campus.Nicole is an internationally recognized expert and leading voice in the movement for Open Education. Starting during her own days as a student, she has worked tirelessly to elevate the issue of college textbook costs and access to education into the public spotlight and to advance openness as a solution in both policy and practice. Drawing on her perspective as both a Millennial and as a professional with more than a decade of experience in this field, she has been widely cited in the media and has given hundreds of talks and trainings in more than a dozen countries on open education, open policy, and grassroots advocacy.
	Joe McArthur  Joseph McArthur is the Assistant Director of the Right to Research Coalition, SPARC’s student initiative. Joe is responsible for organizing and amplifying the student voice to advocate for policies promoting open research and education across the EU and beyond. Joe works to further strengthen and leverage the Right to Research Coalition’s engagement with its membership of more than 90 student organizations, which collectively represent nearly 7 million students in over 100 countries around the world. He also supports preparations for Open Access Week and OpenCon in addition to leading OpenCon’s community initiatives, to ensure the conference has a year-round, global impact. Prior to joining SPARC, Joe co-founded the Open Access Button, a suite of tools to get access to articles behind paywalls, either by finding free, legal alternatives or requesting an author make a copy available. The project has gained significant attention both within and beyond the Open Access community. Joe continues to lead the Open Access Button, which is supported by SPARC.
	Lorraine Chuen  Lorraine joined the Right to Research Coalition in 2016. In her current role as OpenCon Community Manager, she manages the development of OpenCon’s community activities—both through digital community participation and local satellite events. Her work is aimed to build a diverse and inclusive international community, support student and early career efforts to advance Open Access, Open Education and Open Data, and increase the impact of the global OpenCon network. Lorraine’s work has also included creating materials for Open Access Week, producing OpenCon’s 2016 Community Report, and leading the creation of OpenCon’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Report in 2017. She is invested in developing resources that can support OpenCon’s globally diverse community.
	Brady Yano  Brady Yano is the Assistant Director of Open Education for SPARC. In this role he provides support and leads special projects across SPARC’s Open Education portfolio. Brady’s passion for open began during his time as a student leader at Simon Fraser University. Recognizing textbook costs as a barrier to accessing a post-secondary education, he saw open textbooks as the solution. Brady organized a campaign called “#textbookbrokeBC” to raise awareness and expand support for Open Educational Resources (OER) on campus. Brady worked with student societies at other Canadian institutions to launch similar campaigns. He has presented to global audiences on his work promoting OER and co-created the BCcampus OER Student Toolkit. Brady works to advance the impact and reach of SPARC’s Open Education program. This includes managing Connect OER, co-authoring the OER Digest, and giving workshops and presentations on campus. His portfolio also includes support for communications, policy advocacy, and event planning.
	Katie Steen  Katie Steen is the Open Education Fellow for SPARC. Katie is responsible for advocacy, policy analysis, communications, and community building on SPARC’s Open Education program. Katie started working as an Open advocate during graduate school at the University of Missouri after attending the inaugural OpenCon in 2014. During her time in graduate school she led advocacy efforts on Open Education and Open Access as the Assistant Director of Legislative Affairs for the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students (NAGPS) and as the Director of National Affairs for the University of Missouri Graduate Professional Council. She coordinated and led graduate student advocacy visits to D.C. and grassroots organizing efforts at her own campus to advance Open. Katie also worked on college affordability and STEM education initiatives in the Missouri General Assembly as the Executive Director of the Associated Students of the University of Missouri (ASUM). Representing more than 77,000 students across the University of Missouri System, Katie lobbied in the Missouri legislature for four years securing millions in state funds for the UM System and sponsorship for more than 20 pieces of legislation.