As chair of the Nominating Committee, I am delighted to announce the slate for ORCID’s 2026 Board election. As a community-built organization, ORCID is governed by a Board that is representative of its membership and wider community stakeholders. The ORCID Board fulfills an important role in the organization’s governance by providing strategic guidance and oversight for the successful achievement of ORCID’s mission. Our Board members are elected for three-year terms on a staggered schedule, so every year, we hold elections to appoint new members to the Board. More information is available in the ORCID Board Charter.
The Nominating Committee received 14 valid nominations for the Member-Director Board seats and 22 valid nominations for the Researcher-Director seat. The Nominating Committee considered each nomination carefully, striving to build a slate that would bring needed regional balance to the board and fill key sectoral gaps as directors rotate off the board.
Those who have been selected for the slate have experience in two or more of the areas the board identified as top priorities for this year’s nomination cycle:
- Have a track record of advocating on behalf of ORCID within their region and community
- Are knowledgeable about ORCID and/or other scholarly infrastructure services
- Represent one of the following stakeholder groups: funders, government, or policy makers
- Have financial expertise
- Have experience in organizational governance
I would like to thank all of the nominees this year for taking the time to put themselves forward for Board service. For those who were unsuccessful in making the slate this year, there are several other ways to participate in ORCID’s governance, such as committee membership.
I would also like to thank the members of the committee for their hard work and thoughtfulness throughout the process: Board Member Soledad Bravo (Cincel, Chile), External Member Paul Gemmill (Research on Research Institute, UK), Board Member
Lasith Gunawardena (University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka), Board Member
Kalynn Kennon ( University of Oxford, UK), and External Member Karin Wulf (Brown University, USA),
The Nominating Committee recommends the following nominees for election to the ORCID Board for the three-year term as per the bylaws.
2026 Slate
Nicolas Fressengeas, Professor, Université de Lorraine (Second Term, Member-Director, France)
Nicolas Fressengeas earned a PhD in physics in 1997, was granted the right to supervise PhDs in 2001, and became Full Professor in 2004 at the University of Metz, which merged in 2012 into the University of Lorraine. His research interests evolved from non-linear optics to optical materials, involving both experimental and theoretical work, with an emphasis on simulation and optimization in the last decade. He teaches physics, digital physics, computer science, university pedagogy and open science.
In 2017, he created the applied physics master’s degree at his university and became head of his laboratory. He was appointed as his university’s open science officer in 2019, which placed him in charge of editorial, publication, and data policies. This position evolved in 2022 into the vice presidency of his university, in charge of the digital, data and open science policies. At the same time, he was appointed as open science officer in charge of international affairs in the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
Devika Madalli, Director, Information and Library Network Centre (Member-Director, India)
Prof Devika Madalli is the Director, INFLIBNET, UGC-IUC,Gandhinagar. Prior to joining INFLIBNET, Dr.Madalli served as a Professor of the Documentation Research and Training Centre, Indian Statistical Institute and as an adjunct faculty, DISI, University of Trento, Italy. Dr.Madalli has extensive experience in teaching, research and capacity building. Her interest lies in the area of OERs and Educational resources repositories, Open Data Repositories and Data Management, Knowledge Organization and application of facetization in Information Systems, Information Infrastructures, Digital Libraries, Semantic Web technologies, Faceted Ontologies, Agrisemantics, multilingual information services.
Prof Madalli has served as a member of the Karnataka Evaluation Authority (KEA) and is a member of the Karnataka State Higher Education Council. Dr. Madalli has served as a member of the Technical Advisory Board of Research Data Alliance (RDA). She also serves as Co-chair for RDA interest groups on Research Evaluation, Global Research Commons and RDA-SDG group. She is a member of the governance board of DRYAD. Dr.Madalli has served as an expert/consultant to UNESCO, UNFAO, OECD, Commonwealth of Learning and European Commission and has traveled to about 50 countries on professional assignments. She has been awarded Fulbright and Erasmus Mundus fellowships.
Prof Madalli is on the advisory board of Universal Decimal Classification. She serves as the chair of OpenAccessIndia Working Group. She served on the advisory panel and scientific committees of several international conferences such as SWIB, ICADL, MTSR, SCIDATACON, LODLAM and ICSD. She serves as a member of editorial panels of prestigious journals such as Knowledge Organization (ISKO), DSJ, Library Hi-Tech among several others and has published widely.
Heath Marks, CEO, Australian Access Federation (Second Term, Member-Director, Australia)
Heath Marks was appointed by the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT) in July 2009 to head a team to deliver the sustainable operations of Australia’s Trust and Identity services for Research and Education operated by the Australian Access Federation Ltd (AAF). This includes the national trust authentication framework, student verification platform and the Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) Consortium Lead for Australia.
Heath is an IT professional with a wealth of management experience in the successful delivery of transformational Information Technology within the tertiary education and research sector. Over the past 16 years Heath has successfully grown the AAF from a technology startup to a leader in its field that is recognised as a capability under the Australian Government’s National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) and roadmap. Heath participates in many national and international committees and working groups on trust, identity, cyber security, and company strategy. From 2023 – 25 Heath has held a Board Member position with ORCID Inc. He holds qualifications in Information Technology (BInfTech) and Management (MBA, MTechMgt). He has qualifications in corporate governance and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD) and Company Secretary of AAF Ltd.
Steve Pinchotti, CEO, Altum (Second Term, Member-Director, USA)
Steve Pinchotti is Altum’s Chief Executive Officer. He is responsible for setting the strategic direction of the company and overseeing all aspects of the organization.
Altum’s core software platform, ProposalCentral, connects 300+ customers with 40,000+ institutions and 1,000,000+ researchers. ProposalCentral was the first ORCID certified service provider in the grants management community.
With over thirty years of software development and implementation experience with organizations around the world, he is passionate about delivering innovative solutions to Altum’s customers.
Steve’s entrepreneurial and philanthropic interests have led to ownership in three successful companies, and a significant role in growing a local non-profit called Helping Hungry Kids (HHK). Steve is a member of the RAiD pilot project, helping to set the direction for the use of these relatively new persistent identifiers in the research funding ecosystem.
Steve holds a B.S.degree in Computer Science from Westminster College, is a 2014 graduate of the DC-based MindShare CEO Network, and has been a member of the ORCID Board since 2022.
Carly Robinson, Senior Policy Fellow, SPARC (Member-Director, USA)
Carly Robinson is a Senior Policy Fellow at SPARC, focused on advancing policies related to persistent identifiers and metadata standards and contributing more broadly to policy work on open research. SPARC is a nonprofit advocacy organization that supports open systems for research, with members from ~250 libraries and academic organizations across North America.
Carly has been actively involved with PID organizations for the past decade, including ORCID (serving as a board member, developing and leading a consortium), DataCite (serving as a former board member, developing and leading a consortium, serving on the Community Engagement Steering Group, and co-chairing the Americas Expert Group), Crossref (serving on the Funder Advisory Group), and ROR (serving on the Curation Advisory Board).
Prior to SPARC, Carly was the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI) Assistant Director leading the Office of Information Products and Services. Her office focused on the dissemination of DOE-funded research and development, persistent identifier services, collection metadata quality and curation, communications, management of interagency and international products, and policy development and implementation.
Carly was also an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science and Technology Policy Fellow in both the US Senate and the DOE Office of Science. She has a Ph.D. and M.S
Mercury Shitindo, Executive Director, Africa Bioethics Network (Researcher-Director, Kenya)
Mercury Shitindo is a bioethicist, research ethics advisor, and global health governance expert committed to building equitable and inclusive research ecosystems. She is Executive Director of the Africa Bioethics Network (ABN), a pan-African platform advancing ethics capacity, policy engagement, and research equity across 42 countries.
She is a recognized leader in research governance and ethical policy design, having served as an Ethics Expert for the European Commission, a Consultant to the WHO Headquarters Ethics Review Committee, and a Technical Expert for the Vaccine Confidence Fund II under the Advancing Health Online (AHO) initiative. She also provides strategic guidance as Co-Chair of the PHA4GE AI Working Group and as a member of the GA4GH Regulatory and Ethics Work Stream, contributing to global frameworks for responsible genomics and data sharing.
Mercury has pioneered regional programs that strengthen responsible research infrastructure. She led the ORCID Bioethics Community of Practice in Sub-Saharan Africa and authored the 2024 ORCID Landscape Analysis in Bioethics, a foundational report that informs journal indexing practices, ethics committee adoption of ORCID, and global policy discussions, continuing to shape strategic recommendations for ORCID’s engagement in Africa and beyond.
Her research leadership spans multi-country projects funded by WHO, Wellcome Trust, and the British Academy, addressing climate-health ethics, AI in healthcare, reproductive technologies, and governance of children’s mental health research. As founding Co-Editor-in-Chief of the African Journal of Bioethics, she drives equitable open-access publishing and has co-developed flagship training programs—including the Contemporary Bioethics in African Contexts course, the Research Ethics Committee Administrators (RECA) program, and the Peer Reviewer for Equity initiative.
She currently serves on the Program Quality Committee of the Global Health Partnerships (formerly THET) and as First Chair of eLife’s Global South Committee for Open Science. Her work is deeply informed by Ubuntu ethics, decolonial principles, and the conviction that research infrastructure must be transparent, inclusive, and grounded in local realities.
As a Crossref Ambassador and contributor to open science initiatives, Mercury advocates for interoperability, discoverability, and the equitable use of persistent identifiers as essential tools for democratizing global research.
Voting Procedures for ORCID Board of Directors Elections
All ORCID members in good standing as of 21 September are eligible to vote. Online voting will be open from 3 November to 20 November, and full instructions will be sent to the official contact at each member organization by 24 October. Members also have the option to propose write-in candidates for the Board within 30 days of the slate being announced (by 31 October)—full information can be found in our bylaws, Section III, Article 2.
