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  • Laura Valeria Bonora
    • Spain,
    • FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technologya, https://www.fecyt.es/en,
  • NOAD
  • All areas below are grounded in Open Science principles and practices. Research Policy and Governance, Data Management and FAIR Data, Research Infrastructures and EOSC
  • Repositories and Interoperability, Metadata, Identifiers and Standards, Data Ingestion, Curation and Quality Control, Research Analytics and Dashboards
  • Training and Support, Services and Technology, Open Science Strategies

Laura Valeria Bonora is an economist with a Master’s degree in Applied Statistics. She currently serves as Spain’s National Contact Point (NCP) for the Research Infrastructures and Widening (Open Access) programme under Horizon Europe at the European Commission.

In parallel, she works at the Open Science Unit of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), where she is the technical lead for RECOLECTA, the National Open Access Repositories Aggregator in Spain. She is also actively involved in several leading international open science initiatives, such as the Confederation of Open Access Repositories COAR, OpenAIRE AMKE and  the Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications (LA Referencia).

In addition, she serves as Technical Secretariat of the international multi-thematic EU-LAC Joint Call in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), which aims to promote research and innovation projects between the European Union and Latin America and the Caribbean.

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  • Dr. Pilar Rico Castro
    • Spain,
    • FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, https://www.fecyt.es/en,
  • Open Science Head of Unit
  • NOAD
  • All areas below are grounded in Open Science principles and practices. Research Policy and Governance, Research Infrastructures and EOSC, Scholarly Communication and Publishing, Skills Development and Training, Community Building and Engagement
  • Repositories and Interoperability, Metadata, Identifiers and Standards, Data Ingestion, Curation and Quality Control
  • Training and Support, Open Science Strategies

Pilar Rico-Castro, PhD, serves as the Coordinator of the Open Science Unit at the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) and is an associate lecturer at the National Distance Education University (UNED). She earned her PhD in Government and Public Administration from the Complutense University of Madrid in 2006.

Pilar supports the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities in the design, implementation, and evaluation of both national and European R&D&I public policies. At the national level, she is an integral member of the National Open Science Committee (COS), where she contributed to the design and drafting of the National Open Science Strategy (ENCA). Additionally, she coordinates key initiatives for the ENCA deployment such as the  Open Science Public Funding Call (María de Guzman L2), the National Scientific Journals Assessment Process, the National Digital Platform for Academic Publishing RECYT, and the National Open Access Repositories Aggregator RECOLECTA.

Internationally, Pilar is the Spanish Delegate at the European Commission’s National Points of Reference (NPR) for Scientific Information Expert Group, at the EOSC Steering Board Expert Group, and at the Council for National Open Science Coordination (CoNOSC). She is also a national expert on the Horizon Europe Programme Committee for Research Infrastructures.

Furthermore, she represents FECYT in various organizations such as OPERAS, the European Diamond Capacity Hun (EDCH), OpenAIRE AMKE, the Federated Network of Institutional Repositories of Scientific Publications LA Referencia, and the Confederation of Open Access Repositories COAR.

She has participated in several FP7 and H2020 projects, such as OpenAIRE (2009-2012), OpenAIREplus (2011-2014), OpenAIRE2020 (2015-2018), OpenAIRE Advance (2018-2020), the MedOANet project (2011-2013), PASTEUR4OA (2014-2016) EOSC-Future (2021-2024), DIAMAS (2022-2025), and OSTrails (2024-2027). Currently, she plays a significant role ALMASI (2025-2027) Horizon Europe project.

Her areas of expertise are R&D public policies, open science, open access to scientific information, diamond OA publishing, OA repositorioes, open infrastructures. 

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  • Sylvia Koukounidou

Sylvia Koukounidou is a University officer and holds the position of the coordinator of the Digitization and Archives office of the University of Cyprus Library.

Since 2004, Sylvia has been actively involved in European and locally funded projects. Her professional interests primarily encompass Open Science, digitization, and archival management. She is a member of European and local networks and groups related to Open Science representing the University of Cyprus. Additionally, she collaborates closely with national policymakers to establish and promote Open Science within the local research ecosystem.

She played a key role in shaping Cyprus’s National Policy of the Republic of Cyprus for Open Science Practices  (adopted in 2016 and revised in 2022).

She has served in professional roles such as President of the Board of the Cyprus Association of Librarians – Information Scientists (CALIS) and is a founding member and Treasurer of the Cypriot Copyright Association (Cypriot affiliate of ALAI). 

She has contributed to the creation of the Cyprus Archive of Doctoral Dissertations (CADD) and the repositories LEKYTHOS and GNOSIS of the University of Cyprus Library. 

In 2024 and 2025 she was appointed as a National DigiEduHack Ambassador (Digital education initiative of the European Commission).   

Her work and publications typically focus on archival science, digital libraries, metadata, institutional repositories, open science, and intellectual property within the broader context of information science.

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  • Paula Moura
    • Portugal,
    • University of Minho, https://www.uminho.pt/PT/Paginas/default.aspx,
  • Documentation Services
  • NOAD
  • All areas below are grounded in Open Science principles and practices. Data Management and FAIR Data, Scholarly Communication and Publishing, Skills Development and Training, Community Building and Engagement, Digital Communication and Content Strategy
  • Data Ingestion, Curation and Quality Control
  • A few words on your expertise: My work focuses on research data management (RDM) and data curation in institutional data repositories, as member of the team that manage and curate the University of Minho Data Repository. My experience also includes communication and dissemination activities, community engagement, and the production of support and training materials for Open Science, particularly in the areas of Research Data Management (RDM), Open Access (OA) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).
  • Outreach, Communication and Engagement

Paula Moura has been working since 2017 at the Scientific Information Management, Repositories and Open Science Office of the Documentation and Libraries Service of the University of Minho. Her work focuses on research data management (RDM) and data curation in institutional data repositories, including the management and curation of the University of Minho Data Repository.

She has experience in Open Science project development at national and international level, contributing to initiatives such as RCAAP, Re.Data, OpenAIRE-2020, OpenAIRE-Nexus, EOSC-Futures and PATTERN. Her expertise includes communication and dissemination activities, community engagement, and the production of support and training materials for Open Science, particularly in the areas of Research Data Management (RDM), Open Access (OA) and Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI).

Between 2002 and 2017, she worked as an information professional at the Transport and Communications Museum. She holds a degree in Historical Sciences, postgraduate qualifications in Information and Documentation Sciences and Record Management, a Master’s degree in Information Management, and a postgraduate specialisation in Information Systems. Her professional interests include research data management, data curation, repositories, FAIR data and Open Science.

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Sylvia Koukounidou is a University officer and holds the position of the coordinator of the Digitization and Archives office of the University of Cyprus Library.

Since 2004, Sylvia has been actively involved in European and locally funded projects. Her professional interests primarily encompass Open Science, digitization, and archival management. She is a member of European and local networks and groups related to Open Science representing the University of Cyprus. Additionally, she collaborates closely with national policymakers to establish and promote Open Science within the local research ecosystem.

She played a key role in shaping Cyprus’s National Policy of the Republic of Cyprus for Open Science Practices  (adopted in 2016 and revised in 2022).

She has served in professional roles such as President of the Board of the Cyprus Association of Librarians – Information Scientists (CALIS) and is a founding member and Treasurer of the Cypriot association of copyright law (Cypriot affiliate of ALAI). 

She has contributed to the creation of the Cyprus Archive of Doctoral Dissertations (CADD) and the repositories LEKYTHOS and GNOSIS of the University of Cyprus Library. 

In 2024 and 2025 she was nominated as a National DigiEduHack Ambassador (digital education initiative of the European Commission).   

Her work and publications typically focus on archival science, digital libraries, metadata, institutional repositories, open science, and intellectual property within the broader context of information science.

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