Steering Committee
Steering Committee
Strategic Focus Areas
Core mission-driven teams advancing open scholarship, social justice, and community sustainability.
Team
Community & Sustainability
dr. Steven Verheyen
Director
Team
Social Justice & DEIA
Dr. Sarah A. Sauvé
Director
Team
Meta-science & Research
Dr Rachel Heyard
Director
Tom Heyman
Deputy-Director
Berit T. Barthelmes, M.Sc.
Project Manager
Team
Education & Pedagogy
Dr Madeleine Pownall
Director
Lorna Hamilton
Deputy-Director
Operations & Stewardship
Infrastructure, community management, ethical oversight, and support systems powering FORRT.
Team
Community Management
Dr. Amanda Kay Montoya
Director
Dr Kelly Lloyd
Cohesion-Liaison
Giorgia Andreolli
Cohesion-Liaison
Team
Community Engagement
DR
Dr. Lukas Röseler
Infrastructure
Team
Sustainability & Strategy
Dr Sarah Ashcroft-Jones
Director
Sara Lil Middleton
Knowledge Manager
Team
Ethics and Inclusion
Dr John Shaw
Director
Thomas Rhys Evans
Advisor
Team
Fundraising
Dr Max Korbmacher
Director
Karen Matvienko-Sikar
Co-Director
Fotis Mystakopoulos, PhD Student
Officer
Team
Financial Transparency
Alicia Tamara Veersma Barredo
Officer
Team
Partnerships
Adam Partridge
Director
Team
Digital Infrastructure Team
Justin Sulik
Director
Dushime Mudahera Richard
Website Lead
Team
FORRT Stewards
Adira Daniel
FORRT Steward
Stephanie Zellers
FORRT Steward
Meera Chandra
FORRT Steward
Cass Gheoghe
FORRT Steward
Strategic Facilitation & Integration
Synthesising community efforts to maintain alignment with FORRT’s mission and vision.
Dr Lukas Wallrich
Co-Chair
Flavio Azevedo
Director
Guidance & Oversight
Ethical guidance and long-term stewardship.
Sam Parsons
Stewardship Panel
Thomas Rhys Evans
Ombudsman
dr. Steven Verheyen
Director (Community & Sustainability)
Steven Verheyen is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam, where he also coordinates the Open Science Community Rotterdam and is Open Science Champion of the Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences. His work on individual differences in language use is positioned at the intersection of quantitative psychology, philosophy of language, and cognitive linguistics. He also conducts meta-scientific research on incentivization, contributorship, conflicts of interest, and replication. He is currently serving as editor of the Review of Philosophy and Psychology, PCI Psychology, and Replication Research. At FORRT, he aims to promote open and responsible research through pedagogical reform.
Dr. Sarah A. Sauvé
Director (Social Justice & DEIA)
Dr. Sarah Sauvé is currently a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Lincoln. She is a white immigrant living and working on the land of the people who colonized the land on which she was born and spent most of her life so far. She is interested in applying feminist and critical theory and praxis to music science research, where her specialties include the neuroscience of learning, music perception in older adults, computational modeling and public engagement.
In FORRT, she has been involved in co-leading Team Citational Politics and is very excited to be part of FORRT's first steering committee as Director of Social Justice and DEIA!
Dr Rachel Heyard
Director (Meta-science & Research)
I am senior researcher and metaresearcher at the Center for Reproducible Science at the University of Zurich, Switzerland. After my PhD in Biostatistics at University of Zurich, I left academia to join the data team of the Swiss National Science Foundation as a statistician, where I worked on diverse data and statistics projects informing science policy. I returned to academia, after having developed a new passion for metaresearch - the interdisciplinary study of research itself. Now, my research interests include developing and testing new approaches for allocating research funding, statistical methods in research, and improving reproducibility and the uptake of Open Science. Also, I love teaching!
Tom Heyman
Deputy-Director (Meta-science & Research)
Bio coming soon.
Berit T. Barthelmes, M.Sc.
Project Manager (Meta-science & Research)
Berit T. Barthelmes is a PhD student in Psychology at the University of Illinois Chicago, working with Dr. Christine Coughlin in the Future Learning and Memory (FLAME) Lab. Her research focuses on the development of episodic memory and spontaneous future thinking in children, examining how these abilities support learning, imagination, and self-projection across time. She also investigates how mind-wandering relates to the emergence of future-oriented cognition. Before beginning her PhD, Berit earned an M.Sc. in Psychology: Development, Neuroscience, and Cognition at the University of Zurich, where her master’s work sparked a broader interest in the theoretical foundations of psychology and metascientific questions. She is excited about advancing open, transparent, and conceptually grounded approaches to developmental and cognitive science.
Dr Madeleine Pownall
Director (Education & Pedagogy)
Dr Madeleine Pownall is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Leeds. Her work spans three main areas: pedagogical research on psychological literacy and student outcomes; open and transparent research practices in psychology; and feminist social psychology, particularly around gender and equity in education and research. She is interested in how psychological science can be made more inclusive, reflective, and socially responsible. Dr Pownall teaches across undergraduate and postgraduate levels, focusing on evidence-based and inclusive approaches to learning and assessment. She also contributes to projects that promote open scholarship and the integration of global citizenship within psychology curricula. Alongside her research and teaching, she serves on professional committees, mentors early career researchers, and co-authored A Feminist Companion to Social Psychology. Her work aims to support students and researchers to engage critically and ethically with psychological knowledge.
Lorna Hamilton
Deputy-Director (Education & Pedagogy)
Bio coming soon.
Dr. Amanda Kay Montoya
Director (Community Management)
Dr. Montoya is an Associate Professor of Quantitative Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is an advocate for open science and leader across communities, serving on the Board of Directors for the Center for Open Science, the APA Open Science and Methodology Panel, and multiple editorial roles for coordinating registered reports, including as a recommender for Peer Community In Registered Reports. Her research focuses on early adoption of new research practices, with a particular focus on registered reports. She also studies open science practices for computationally intensive approaches such as Monte Carlo simulations.
Dr Kelly Lloyd
Community Cohesion-Liaison
I am a Research Fellow working in primary care research and implementation science at the Leeds Institute of Health Sciences, University of Leeds. I am a keen advocate for open research practices, which led to me joining the amazing FORRT community in 2021! Since, I have worked behind the scenes on aspects such as our communication (e.g., newsletter, social media), and community and cohesion building.
Giorgia Andreolli
Community Cohesion-Liaison
Bio coming soon.
Dr Sarah Ashcroft-Jones
Director (Sustainability & Strategy)
Sarah Ashcroft-Jones is a researcher of the psychological and behavioural sciences at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. Her research interests include decision making, categorisation, and cognitive biases. Her current work focuses on understanding the individual and structural factors that influence financial and health behaviours. She leads the Junior Researcher Programme, which develops opportunities for early career researchers in the psychological and behavioural sciences. She is an advocate of open science practices and open pedagogy.
Sara Lil Middleton
Knowledge Manager (Sustainability & Strategy)
Bio coming soon.
Dr John Shaw
Director (Ethics and Inclusion)
John J. Shaw (he/him) is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Edge Hill University and a Chartered Psychologist with the British Psychological Society. His research sits in cognitive and developmental psychology, with one consistent theme: sleep. He studies how sleep supports learning, memory, and cognitive performance, including how sleeping soon after learning can strengthen understanding of newly taught mathematical concepts. He also works on how social media use in preadolescents relates to sleep and wellbeing, at a stage where many children are online before traditional “minimum age” guidelines. Beyond sleep, he has collaborated on work examining how autistic children understand ownership and how neurodiversity is treated within academia. Alongside his academic role, he is active in open research and reproducibility work, contributing to the Framework for Open and Reproducible Research Training (FORRT), an international initiative focused on research transparency and accessible training for early-career researchers.
Thomas Rhys Evans
Advisor (Ethics and Inclusion)
Bio coming soon.
Dr Max Korbmacher
Director (Fundraising)
Max Korbmacher is a neuroscientist with a research focus at the intersection of basic and translational brain science. His primary work involves the analysis of large-scale neuroimaging datasets to develop and adapt machine learning models that generalize from healthy populations to individuals with neurological disorders. These models are informed by ageing research and aim to elucidate mechanisms of brain structure and clinical presentation across the lifespan. His broader research interests span neurology, psychology, and meta-science, with a particular emphasis on enhancing the transparency, reproducibility, and interpretability of empirical research. Dr. Korbmacher is actively engaged in interdisciplinary collaborations and contributes to ongoing efforts to strengthen methodological standards in neuroscience and beyond.
Karen Matvienko-Sikar
Co-Director (Fundraising)
Bio coming soon.
Fotis Mystakopoulos, PhD Student
Officer (Fundraising)
Fotis Mystakopoulos is a professional actively engaged in advancing Open Science. His career trajectory reflects the evolution of information science, from its traditional roots in library services to its modern role in shaping research policy and data infrastructure. With a background in Library and Information Science, he has developed expertise in key areas of scholarly communication, including Responsible Research Assessment, Open Access, Open Science Training, and Research Data Management.
Beyond his formal roles, he is actively engaged in community building, supporting initiatives that connect researchers and professionals around shared values and practices of openness and advocating for cultural change in academia that aligns with the ethos of Open Science.
Currently, alongside his professional duties, he is pursuing a PhD at the University of West Attica, examining the evolution of academic libraries, and theire services within the expanding global landscape of Open Science.
Alicia Tamara Veersma Barredo
Officer (Financial Transparency)
I recently joined FORRT and am beginning to support the team with operational and administrative tasks, especially in accounting and coordination. I’m excited to contribute to FORRT’s mission of fostering open and reproducible research and to learn more about the work that makes such initiatives possible. My background is in office administration and project organization, and I’m particularly interested in how clear structures and good processes can help teams work more effectively.
Adam Partridge
Director (Partnerships)
Bio coming soon.
Justin Sulik
Director (Digital Infrastructure Team)
Bio coming soon.
Dushime Mudahera Richard
Website Lead
Bio coming soon.
Adira Daniel
FORRT Stewards
Bio coming soon.
Stephanie Zellers
FORRT Stewards
Bio coming soon.
Meera Chandra
FORRT Stewards
Bio coming soon.
Cass Gheoghe
FORRT Stewards
Bio coming soon.
Dr Lukas Wallrich
Co-Director of FORRT
I work as a Lecturer in Organisational Psychology at Birkbeck Business School, University of London. There, I teach on organisational psychology master programmes and research how workforce diversity can be harnessed to improve organisational performance, and how we can improve the reliability of research. This includes co-leading FORRT’s Replication Hub, acting as a Senior Editor for Replication Research, and leading the UKRI-funded project Making Replications Count. In addition, I am interested in intergroup contact research, and serve as Co-Chair of the International Contact Research Network.
I am also very interested in Open Science and an avid R user. In that space, I enjoy contributing to the development of tools that support open research - for instance, the CiteSource package that supports meta-analyses. I have also authored three R packages, rsprite2, timesaveR and metaUI.
Flavio Azevedo
Director of FORRT
Bio coming soon.
Sam Parsons
Stewardship Council Chair
Bio coming soon.
Thomas Rhys Evans
Ombudsman
Bio coming soon.