Karthik Ram is a research scientist at the

Berkeley Institute for Data Science The Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) is a central hub of research and education within University of California, Berkeley designed to facilitate data-intensive science and earn grants to be disseminated within the sciences. BIDS was init ...

and member of the Initiative for Global Change Biology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He is best known for being the co-founder of rOpenSci. Ram's work focuses on global change, data science, and open research software.

Career

Ram received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Ecology and Evolution at

University of California, Davis The University of California, Davis (UC Davis, UCD, or Davis) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Davis, California, United States. It is the northernmost of the ten campuses of the University ...

. After his PhD, he went on to hold a post-grad position at

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California, United States. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of C ...

before eventually moving to UC Berkeley. Currently, Karthik Ram is a research scientist at UC

for both the

and the Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology. His work aims to make it easier for scientists to produce reproducible research.

Projects

Ram co-created rOpenSci in 2011, and is currently the lead of the project. rOpenSci is non-profit with the goal of making data retrieval more accessible through open source

R package R packages are extensions to the R statistical programming language. R packages contain code, data, and documentation in a standardised collection format that can be installed by users of R, typically via a centralised software repository such a ...

s. He also a member of the peer-review and editorial staff for the rOpenSci Software Review. Ram is the lead principal investigator for the URSSI (US Research Software Sustainability Institute). Karthik Ram has been the lead of this project since its initial grant in December, 2017. Ram is a founding editor of the

Journal of Open Source Software The ''Journal of Open Source Software'' is a peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal covering open-source software from any research discipline. The journal was founded in 2016 by editors Arfon Smith, Kyle Niemeyer, Dan Katz, Kevin Moerman, a ...

, and an editorial board member of ReScience C and

Research Ideas and Outcomes The ''Research Ideas and Outcomes'' (RIO) is a journal claimed to be both peer-reviewed, and open-access, published by Pensoft Publishers, stating a goal to promote transparency, reliability, and effectiveness in scientific research. Since its 2 ...

, which are both academic journals focused on open research sustainability.

Awards

* Leamer-Rosenthal Prizes for Open Social Science (2007) * rOpenSci awarded $2.9M grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust

Notable works

Among Ram's notable work are the following: * ''Point of view: How open science helps researchers succeed'' * ''Git can facilitate greater reproducibility and increased transparency in science'' * ''Data carpentry: workshops to increase data literacy for researchers''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ram, Karthik Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of California, Santa Cruz alumni University of California, Davis alumni American ecologists Data scientists R (programming language) people University of California, Berkeley faculty