Howdy, I’m Karthik

Passionate about leading the charge in Open Science, my journey intertwines with Global Change Biology, Reproducible Research, and Sustainable Research Software. I remain dedicated to fostering connections and exploring collaborative frontiers.

Photo: Chris Michel

Working at the interface of data science and global change

I’m a research scientist at UC Berkeley’s Institute for Data Science, currently on an indefinite leave. My research is interdisciplinary and covers areas such as understanding impacts of climate change on ecological communities, reproducible research, sustainable scientific software, and open science. I co-founded and directed the rOpenSci Project from 2011-2024 and also co-founded URSSI. I continue to serve on the on the boards of URSSI, Open Journals, and The Software Sustainability Institute. I hold a PhD in Ecology and Evolution from UC Davis, and have held postdoctoral positions at UC Santa Cruz and UC Berkeley.

Full Bio & Photos

A few of my past projects

rOpenSci

From 2011 to 2024, I co-founded and directed a collaborative project that aimed to lower barriers to accessing scientific data and make research more reproducible. Over that 13-year period, I led efforts to improve the accessibility and transparency of scientific research.

Learn More

UC Berkeley

I'm an a senior fellow at UC Berkeley's Berkeley Institute for Data Science.

Learn More

URSSI

I was the lead PI behind an NSF funded effort called US Research Software Sustainability Institute.

Learn More

Research Software is critical for society to make progress in science, but much of it is developed and maintained unsustainably, making it hard to reuse and build upon existing work. Through my work at rOpenSci and URSSI, I strive to improve the state of scientific software and its impact on science.

I frequently speak about open science and research software in academia

View All Talks

Latest talk

Apr, 4, 2023

How to enable and sustain thriving Open Source Ecosystems (OSE)

Software impacts virtually all areas of research but has been a heavily undervalued contribution. Over the past decade alone, the research software landscape has changed dramatically. It is now substantially easier to start new software projects, …

Recent publication

Support Scientific Software Infrastructure By Requiring SBOMs For Federally Funded Research

James Howison and Karthik Ram

View Publication View All Publications

My work relies on using historic and modern ecological data with data science tools and methods to understand how systems respond to global change.

I occasionally blog about topics related to open science, ecology, and data visualization

View All Posts

Latest post

November 3, 2020

Enabling culture change for meaningful data sharing

Nick Tierney and I have been working on a paper about data sharing from the perspective of computational reproducibility and the practicalities of reproducing published research or other analyses. Our original paper was substantially longer and took …