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

21 Aug 2021


      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/department...
[5] https://www.adfg.alaska.gov/index.cfm?adfg=fishinggeneconservationlab.main
[6] https://genetics-gsa.org/career-development/genetics-peer-review-training-pr...
[7] https://eventfund.codeforscience.org/
[8] https://codeforscience.org/
[9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Foundations_-_Wikimedia_Research_2030.p...
--
Leila Zia
Head of Research
Wikimedia Foundation