Speakers: EMEA User Meeting 2026

Bill Ayres is Strategic Lead for Research Data Management within the University of Manchester Library’s Office for Open Research. His focus areas for RDM services include open data publishing, data management planning, and enhancing training, advocacy and support for UoM’s research community across all disciplines.  With over 20 years’ experience in the HE sector Bill delivered IT infrastructure services and projects at faculty level (storage, compute, networks, desktop) before moving to the library side and developing a passion for open research.

Manya joined Digital Science in 2019 and since then has led the delivery of key initiatives including the Item evaluation module, the OA Monitor revamp, REF2021, and the Awards Management module.

Prior to Symplectic, Manya spent 14 years at the University of Edinburgh, latterly as the Head of Research Policy and Planning Services where she managed the University’s REF2014 and RAE2008 research assessment submissions. She previously worked at Elsevier as Senior Product Manager for Pure. Manya has a BA (Hons) in Archaeology from Simon Fraser University and an MBA from the University of Edinburgh.

As SVP, Product – Academic, Kate brings 10 years of product and strategic leadership, delivering software solutions to world-leading research organisations. At Digital Science, she leads product management for a B2B SaaS portfolio serving more than 950 academic institutions and research centres. Before joining Digital Science, Kate spent nearly a decade working in universities, specialising in academic libraries, scholarly publishing, research reporting, open access and researcher engagement.

Ann Campbell is Director of Research Impact and Comparative Analytics at Digital Science. She spent 16 years working within the university sector, leading research systems, data, assessment and evaluation activities and supporting institutional research strategy. She subsequently moved into the research technology sector, bringing that practitioner experience to her work with universities, funders and other research organisations internationally. Her current work focuses on research intelligence, benchmarking, research assessment, rankings and reputation, and responsible research evaluation. Ann is particularly interested in how diverse sources of research data can be combined to move beyond traditional metrics, identify emerging strengths and opportunities, and provide academic leaders and funders with more meaningful evidence to inform strategic decision-making.

As Product Manager at Figshare, Frankie Dickens focuses on connecting user needs with platform functionality to better serve the research community. With nearly three years at Digital Science and a background in academic publishing, she brings dedicated experience promoting open and accessible research sharing.

Jitka is educated in biology and has worked for several years as a researcher in toxicology and public health. For the last 9 years, Jitka has worked in research support mainly at university libraries. As a research data management specialist at DTU Library, she supports researchers, research support staff and management by supporting and developing data management practices across the university. She’s part of the team responsible for DTU’s research data repository service.

Dave is the REF Lead at the University of Sheffield, where he leads the preparation and coordination of the University’s REF submission. This is his third REF, having joined the REF team during preparations for REF 2014. He has also been seconded to the REF Secretariat three times, supporting the criteria setting and assessment phases of the exercise, and served on the REF Data Collection Steering Group in REF 2021, advising on the development of the REF Submission System.

Dave has also been the University’s technical lead for Symplectic Elements since its adoption around 15 years ago. During this time, he has overseen the implementation and evolution of the system through several major versions and numerous updates, working with users to introduce new functionality and support adoption, as well as developing integrations and new uses of the system across the University.

Ben began his career in the world of publishing and publishing technology in 2004 at John Wiley and Sons. After taking a position in media monitoring in Australia for several years, he then returned to the world of academic publishing, but this time focusing on technology. Ben has spent the last 13 years at Digital Science, representing the Altmetric and Dimensions services for academic institutions across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. 

Yusuf Ozkan is Research Outputs Analyst in the Scholarly Communications at the Library Services, responsible for providing support about responsible use of publication metrics; managing internal dashboards; research analytics products; and advocating unique identifiers.

Domi is a Research Support Librarian at Sheffield Hallam University, where she supports postgraduate students, researchers, and research-active academic staff across the entire research lifecycle. Her expertise includes research data management, open access publishing, science communication, and the responsible use of AI in research. She is passionate about open research, which led her to become an Open Research Champion. In this role, Domi actively advocates for and supports the adoption of open research practices across the university, fostering transparency, collaboration, and greater research impact. Her work sits at the intersection of innovation and scholarship, helping researchers maximise the visibility, integrity, and reach of their work in an increasingly digital landscape. Building on her previous experience, Domi continues to support the Research Excellence Framework and work to improve reproducibility across the university’s research activities.

Mani is an undergraduate in engineering, has a Masters in Cognitive Science, and an ongoing PhD at TU Delft on human-AI interaction. He is interested in data and in finding novel ways to extract knowledge from data. Mani is currently helping to develop an ELT pipeline + data warehouse for the TU Delft library. The next step will be to make use of this infrastructure to extract insights into TU Delft’s scientific research. manitajaddini.com