Gerry works for the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies – an intellectual haven for slow science and academic freedom based on the Princeton Model. Before joining NIAS, he worked in the field of Research Data, building a Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) Observatory, to explore the histories and evolution of systems such as ontologies, taxonomies, vocabularies & thesauri. While working at Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS) he also contributed to projects for the implementation of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), such as FAIRsFAIR, and the EOSC-Synergy project. Then working on aspects related to semantics, interoperability, and project coordination. Gerry is currently an Editor of the Basic Register of Thesauri, Ontologies & Classifications (BARTOC), and Treasurer of the International Society for Knowledge Organisation (ISKO) Low Countries Chapter.

‘Open Science implies a radical change in the way of doing research and disseminating the results, where great technological development and a cultural change towards openness and collaboration are combined, promoting a more efficient, transparent and accessible science.’* Inspired by the words (and actions) of dedicated Open Science Champions such as Prof. Dr. Eva Mendez (UC3M), Gerry is motivated to play his small role in enabling this impending paradigm shift. That is one among many reasons he is a proud ambassador of Software Heritage.

* Méndez, E. (2021). Open Science by default. The «new normal» for research. Arbor, 197(799), a587. https://doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2021.799002