About

Over two decades, Varsha has shaped and defined many of the data curation, open science and data sharing practices now commonly adopted by research institutes, scientific publishers and beyond.

After receiving her PhD in Molecular Biology from the University of Leicester, Varsha began her data curation career working on the Human Genome Project (HGP) as part of the Human Gene Nomenclature Committee. After the HGP ended, Varsha moved into Gene Ontology annotation at University College London (UCL).

This early experience of open science in action was a perfect lead into the vanguard of open data publishing; initially at the publication platform F1000Research, subsequently moving to a data-focused editorial role at Springer Nature’s flagship data journal, Scientific Data.

Varsha is an experienced trainer, having spent several years teaching and training academics at all stages of their careers on data curation at UCL. Varsha also contributed to the development of the Nature Research Academies international workshops on research data sharing and management, delivering training in person and remotely as required.

As Scientific Advisory Committee member for the Global Biodata Coalition, and as Executive Advisor for FAIRsharing.org, Varsha provides governance input to these important components of the international data repository infrastructure.

Varsha has acheived Certified Data Management Professional - CDMP® status from the international Data Management Association (DAMA). 

Varsha lives in the UK, and in her downtime enjoys spending quality time with her husband and their two almost adult children - going for long walks in the Surrey hills, or challenging ourselves with board games and escape rooms at the weekends.