who we are

Erik Schultes

Erik Schultes is the scientific director at partners in FAIR since 2020. From 2018, Erik has been the Lead FAIR implementation at the GO FAIR Foundation and is currently Senior Researcher at the Metabolomics and Analytics Center, Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR). Erik is co-author on the original publication of the FAIR Guiding Principles, co-developer of the first FAIR maturity evaluation service and architect of the now widely adopted FAIR Implementation Profile for driving FAIR Convergence. Along with Barbara Magagna, Erik created the Three-Point FAIRification Framework that is now deployed by partners in FAIR for building capacity. These efforts include the development of the first accredited and qualified FAIR awareness training programs for executives and front-line data producers. Erik is currently co-chair of the FIP & Practice Working Group of the FAIR Digital Object Forum. Erik is an evolutionary biologist with a data-intensive research focus and has held previous academic appointments at the University of California Los Angeles, The Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Santa Fe Institute.

erik [at] partnersinfair com  orcid  linkedin


Barbara Magagna

Barbara Magagna is a landscape ecologist and knowledge engineer. Since 2007 she has been working for the Environment Agency Austria as a semantic analyst and database designer. She has been leading the development process of ontologies and vocabularies for the eLTER Research Infrastructure (ecosystem domain). As a co-chair of the RDA WG I-ADOPT she has co-developed an interoperability framework for the semantic representation of observable properties. Within ENVRI-FAIR she leads the FAIR assessment of data and services provided by Environmental Research Infrastructures. Barbara has worked for years as a university lecturer for GIS techniques and landscape planning at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. Together with Erik Schultes, working both for partners in FAIR and the GO FAIR Foundation, she has developed the FAIR Implementation Profile approach and the concept for M4M workshops and has co-lead many of the FIP workshops for different scientific communities as well as M4M workshops for the Dutch Health Research Infrastructure.

barbara [at] partnersinfair com  orcid  linkedin


Jacintha Schultes

Jacintha Schultes, managing director of partners in FAIR, has over 25 years experience managing data intensive initiatives within academic and commercial organizations, many of which were progenitors of FAIR. From tech startups, to funding organizations and most recently, GO FAIR Foundation, Jacintha has offered professional support and operational solutions for a range of stakeholders engaged in data innovation.

jacintha [at] partnersinfair com