Researcher profile

Vincent Stuart Smith

I am a Research Leader in Informatics and Head of the Digital Data and Informatics (DDI) department at the Natural History Museum (NHM), London. I've been based at the NHM since 2006 and have led the Museum's digital science function in various guises since 2012. As Head of DDI, I look after a team of 40+ data scientists and engineers managing the digitisation of our collections, the associated data and various informatics tasks linked to NHM research, including our Data Portal, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) team. In this capacity, I also head-up a series of national and international consortia focused on the digitisation, development and use of natural science collections data, including the UK's Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo UK), the EC-funded SYNTHESYS programme and representation for collections on the UK node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF). In addition, I am the editor-in-chief of the Biodiversity Data Journal, one of the world's largest, and arguably the most innovative, data journals.