[Wiki-research-l] [announcement] Welcoming Emily Lescak to Research at the Wikimedia Foundation

Hi all, In February 2021, I reached out to you [0] to gather your input for a new position that we were creating in the Research team [1] at the Wikimedia Foundation, a research community focus role. In March 2021, I shared the job opening with you [2]. Today I'm introducing Emily Lescak who joined our team in June 2021 as a Senior Research Community Officer. Emily earned a PhD in Fisheries from the University of Alaska Fairbanks College of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences [3] and has extensive experience in research, data science, education and community engagement. She was a National Science Foundation-funded postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alaska Anchorage [4], a fisheries geneticist at the Alaska Department of Fish and Game [5], and the program specialist for the Genetics Society of America’s Peer Review Training Program [6]. Most recently, she developed The Event Fund [7] at Code for Science & Society [8], which provides financial and programmatic support to organizers of international open data science events. In the Research team Emily will focus on initiatives that help expand, diversify and support the community of Wikimedia researchers globally. My ask to Emily has been to focus her efforts between July 2021 and June 22 (Fiscal Year 22) primarily on developing a strategy for our team with regards to our responsibility towards and opportunity in interacting with (the Wikimedia) researchers. Emily will be building on some of our early thoughts as a team in this space developed in 2019 [9] and will work closely with many of you to achieve this goal. To this end, she has started a listening tour to learn more from the perspectives of some of the existing community members. If you'd like to talk with Emily, you should feel welcome to email her directly or express interest in https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T287615 . Please welcome Emily to the research community! :) Best, Leila [0] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia… [1] https://research.wikimedia.org/team.html [2] https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/wiki-research-l@lists.wikimedia… [3] https://www.uaf.edu/cfos/ [4] https://www.uaa.alaska.edu/academics/college-of-arts-and-sciences/departmen… [5] https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fishinggeneconservationlab.main [6] https://genetics-gsa.org/career-development/genetics-peer-review-training-p… [7] https://eventfund.codeforscience.org/ [8] https://codeforscience.org/ [9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foundations_-_Wikimedia_Research_2030.… -- Leila Zia Head of Research Wikimedia Foundation