Dr Michelle Barker works both as an Open Science Consultant, and as the Director of the Research Software Alliance. As a sociologist, Michelle is passionate about building collaborative partnerships to achieve system change, and she brings extensive expertise in leading strategic and policy initiatives.

She serves on advisory boards for FAIR Impact, European Virtual Institute for Research Software Excellence (EVERSE), Research Software Engineers Asia Association, and the Research Data Alliance Organisational Advisory Board. As a consultant, her roles have included co-editing Software and skills for research computing in the UK; and the European Open Science Cloud report, Digital Skills for FAIR and Open Science.

Michelle is a former Director of the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), where she led the strategic planning for the Australian government’s $180 million, five-year investment in ARDC, and the national research software infrastructure investment program.