Samantha Pearman-Kanza | Senior Enterprise Fellow
University of Southampton

Dr Samantha Pearman-Kanza is a Senior Enterprise Fellow at the University of Southampton. She is a Pathfinder Lead on Process Recording for the Physical Sciences Data Infrastructure (PSDI) Initiative - www.psdi.ac.uk. She is part of the AIChemy Hub Team (run out of Imperial College London and the University of Liverpool), working on process recording and data management, and also coordinates the Future Blood Testing Network (www.futurebloodtesting.org) run out of the University of Reading. She also sits on the Advisory Boards for the Future Labs Live Conference in Basel, and the Machines Learning Chemistry Project at the University of Nottingham. She is also a regular columnist for the new Lab Horizons Magazine - https://labhorizons.co.uk/. Samantha works in the interdisciplinary research area of applying computer science techniques to the scientific domain, specifically through the use of semantic web technologies and artificial intelligence. Her research encompasses all aspects of process recording, from the use of digital tools for scientists (including electronic lab notebooks), automatic metadata extraction, creating and enabling FAIR data and processes, and the role of voice and IoT technologies in the lab of the future. She has extensive experience in working with relational databases and knowledge graphs, and has also worked on a number of interdisciplinary Semantic Web projects in different domains, including agriculture, chemistry and the social sciences.

Appearances:

Day 1: 27th May @ 14:00

Panel: FAIR data and publishing -Why should scientific publishers & the lab community care about FAIR data?

Why is FAIR data & Meta data so important?
Why is it therefore important that the studies published are FAIR?
What are the current practices?
How can we as a community ensure studies are FAIR in order to be published?

Moderator: Samantha Pearman-Kanza, Senior Enterprise Fellow, University of Southampton

Tamara Hughes, Executive Editor, The Royal Society of Chemistry

Philippe Marc, Global Head of Integrated Data Sciences, Novartis Biomedical Research

Martyn Rittman, Program Lead, Crossref

Day 1: 27th May @ 15:30

One does not simply implement an Electronic Lab Notebook: The epic saga of ELN implementation

With the ever increasing realisation that a majority of scientific research data that is published is not “FAIR” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) there has been a strong push in recent years to implement digital tools within the labs (namely Electronic Lab Notebooks) to combat this. However, implementing an Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) is no mean feat, it is a sociotechnical challenge with a range of barriers and considerations that need to be taken into account if this is to be achieved successfully. Furthermore, we need to understand that implementing an ELN is not the end of the journey; digital tools and digitally produced data are arguably no more FAIR than the original paper based lab book if they are not utilised to their full extent. Join me to delve into my decade long journey in how to implement Electronic Lab Notebooks.

Samantha Pearman-Kanza, Senior Enterprise Fellow, University of Southampton

Day 2: 28th May @ 14:15

From zero to hero: Transforming data stewardship

The amount of data generated by research, is growing at an exponential rate. And yet, so much of this data is unusable, due to the lack of expertise, tools, and resources for effective data management. Data Stewards are the key to bridging the gap between data generation and reuse, as they have a fundamental role that ensures the quality, accuracy, accessibility and longevity of data across the entire data lifecycle. We place great value in data, but the current investment in the time and resources to drive forward data excellence is sorely lacking, and best practice like FAIR cannot be implemented without investing in data stewards. This presentation will explore the role and requirements of data stewards across the entire research data lifecycle, and demonstrate how researchers and data stewards can work together to create FAIRer data.

Samantha Pearman-Kanza, Senior Enterprise Fellow, University of Southampton

last published: 29/Apr/25 13:45 GMT

back to speakers