Board of Directors
NFDI4Microbiota is coordinated and represented by a dual leadership team (Board of Directors) consisting of the
speaker Konrad Förstner (ZB MED) and the co-speaker Alice McHardy (HZI). They are responsible for orchestrating
the Task Areas and ensuring the proper connection between participants, Use Cases and measures. As well as
coordinating measures to ensure that milestones are reached and deliverables released on time, they are
responsible for the achievement of the overall project aims. They are also monitoring NFDI4Microbiota’s
compliance with all NFDI requirements and obligations and report to the General Assembly (GA) and the Scientific
Advisory Board (SAB).
Prof. Dr. Konrad Foerstner
ZB MED
Konrad Förstner studied biochemistry and computer science in Greifswald, Germany, before
performing a Ph.D. in bioinformatics in the group of Peer Bork at the European Molecular
Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. After that, he worked as a freelancing
software developer and then started postdoctoral research with Jörg Vogel at the Institute
for Molecular Infection Biology (IMIB) and Cynthia Sharma at the Center for Infectious
Diseases (ZINF) in Würzburg, Germany. He first became Head of Bioinformatics at the Core
Unit Systems Medicine of the University and the University Clinic Würzburg and then the head
of the full unit. Since May 2018 he is a joint professor for Data and Information Literacy
at the TH Köln and ZB MED - Information Centre of Life Sciences - in Cologne where he leads
the Data Science and Services unit. His research covers the integration of large data
corpora in the life sciences to answer a diverse set of biological questions and includes
the system biological analysis of high-throughput data, automatic text analysis of
biomedical literature, and the development of research software for these purposes.
Konrad Förstner is a member of several organizations that promote Open Science. He is a
founding member of the working group "Open Science" of the Open Knowledge Foundation Germany
and he represents the German Rectors' Conference in the working group "Digital tools:
Software and Services" in the Priority Initiative "Digital Information" which is a joint
initiative of the Alliance of Science Organisations in Germany. Since 2019 he is a member of
the Advisory Board of the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society - the German
Internet Institute. Prof. Förstner is strongly involved in "The Carpentries" (an umbrella of
Software, Data, and Library Carpentry) - a non-profit organization that aims to teach
fundamental data science skills to scientists and librarians.
He is the speaker of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium.
Prof. Dr. Alice McHardy
HZI
Since 2014, Alice McHardy leads the Department of “Computational Biology for Infection
Research” at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) and is a full professor in
the Carl-Friedrich-Gauss Department and Department of Life Sciences at the Technical
University of Braunschweig, Germany. Alice McHardy has been recognized as a Highly Cited
Researcher by Clarivate since 2020 and is the co-founder and organizer of the CAMI, the
initiative for the Critical Assessment of Metagenome Interpretation, a community-driven
initiative promoting the establishment of best practices in computational metagenomics by
organizing benchmarking challenges for the field. She is also involved in community
engagement and scientific advisory boards of multiple initiatives in computational
microbiome research, standards and best practice development such as the Genomic Standards
Consortium (GSC), the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC), the German Network for
Bioinformatics Infrastructure (de.NBI), and the Microbiome Community of Special Interest of
ISCB.
Administration Unit
The Administration Unit (AU) of NFDI4Microbiota supports the Board of Directors with the coordination of the
consortium, including internal and external communication, monitoring of milestones and deliverables, reporting,
quality assurance, and DFG/NFDI administrative tasks.
Barbara Götz
Coordination and administration of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium, community outreach and public relations
ZB MED
Dr. Cordula Hege
Coordination and administration of the NFDI4Microbiota consortium, community outreach and public relations
HZI
General Assembly
The General Assembly (GA) consists of the ten NFDI4Microbiota partners (previously called co-applicants) (with voting rights) and the spokespersons of the participating institution (without voting rights). It is the ultimate decision-making body of the consortium in terms of content and organization. The GA monitors progress toward meeting the requirements of the Task Areas (TAs) and measures. The GA also ensures NFDI4Microbiota forges connections with other NFDI consortia, and communicates with the NFDI committees and the national and international communities. The GA members meet twice a year and report to the Board of Directors on the progress made within the TAs and measures they lead.
