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GA4GH welcomes new leadership
21 Aug 2025
New Co-Leads have been appointed to the GA4GH Implementation Forum (GIF), Discovery Work Stream, and Infectious Disease Community of Interest to advance GA4GH’s mission of enabling responsible genomic and health data sharing.
GA4GH is pleased to announce the appointment of several community members into new leadership roles. Please join us in welcoming new GA4GH Implementation Forum Co-Leads Brian O’Connor and Wafaa M. Rashed; Discovery Work Stream Co-Leads David Bujold and Miro Cupak; and Infectious Disease Community of Interest Co-Leads Charlie Barclay, Samantha Chill, and Nishan Katuwal.
These leaders will drive collaborative efforts among the GA4GH Work Streams, Communities of Interest, and broad implementation community. They will foster the development of products, policy frameworks, and standards that can be implemented across a variety of global contexts to enable broad, responsible genomic data sharing.
GA4GH Implementation Forum
The GA4GH Implementation Forum (GIF) drives GA4GH production implementation, promotes standards interoperability, and ensures standards are fit for purpose across a wide variety of contexts. GIF provides a convening platform for implementers across scientific, clinical, and industry domains to explore how GA4GH product implementation can solve real-world challenges. Brian O’Connor (Nimbus Informatics, LLC) and Waffa M. Rashed (PAPERI [Pan-African PGS Education and Research Initiative]) will join Mallory Freeberg (EMBL’s European Bioinformatics Institute) as GIF Co-Leads.
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Brian O’Connor is the owner and principal architect at Nimbus Informatics, LLC, a consulting firm specialising in biomedical data architecture, interoperability standards, and AI integration. He serves as an enterprise architect for the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) BioData Catalyst (BDC) programme (a GA4GH Driver Project), guiding the development of secure, cloud-based platforms for biomedical research. Alongside his new leadership role in GIF, O’Connor is also Co-Lead of the GA4GH Cloud Work Stream. In his dual-role, Brian works with the global community to align technical implementations with GA4GH standards, enabling more seamless, secure, and scalable data sharing to advance genomic and health research worldwide. “I’m honoured to serve as Co-Lead of the GA4GH Implementation Forum and to collaborate with an inspiring global community. Through GIF, and the wider adoption of interoperable standards, we will help to make it easier for researchers everywhere to securely share and analyse data, ultimately driving faster progress in genomic and health research.” – Brian O’Connor |
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Wafaa M. Rashed is the Chair and Founder of PAPERI (Pan-African PGS Education and Research Initiative). She brings extensive experience spanning clinical research, teaching, and implementation science, including serving as a Teaching Assistant for the Principles and Practice of Clinical Research (PPCR) course affiliated to the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and as a lecturer at the Armed Forces College of Medicine-Egypt. With interests in cancer genetics, research ethics, and equitable health data sharing, Rashed is committed to advancing real-world implementation of GA4GH standards globally — especially across low- and middle-income countries.
“It is an honour to serve as Co-Lead of the GA4GH Implementation Forum. I am committed to advancing real-world implementation of GA4GH standards globally — and to ensuring that voices and innovations from Africa and other low- and middle-income regions are central to shaping an equitable future for genomics.” — Wafaa M. Rashed |
Discovery Work Stream
The Discovery Work Stream is building a network of tools to develop infrastructure for an “internet of genomics” that will enable quicker genomic data searches to facilitate informed, personalized health care. David Bujold (Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics) and Miro Cupak (DNAstack) are newly appointed Co-Leads, joining Nara Sobreira (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine). A thank you must also be extended to exiting Co-Lead, Michael Baudis (University of Zürich; Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics), who is now serving on the GA4GH Strategic Leadership Committee.
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David Bujold leads the Data Team at the Canadian Centre for Computational Genomics (C3G) — part of the Victor Philip Dahdaleh Institute of Genomic Medicine, one of GA4GH’s Host Institutions. His interests focus on developing interoperable platforms and standards for ethical, privacy-preserving sharing and exploration of genomics and epigenomics data. At GA4GH, Bujold co-leads the Experiments Metadata working group, leads the Beacon Aggregation Scout group, and plays an active role in the core Beacon API specification development. He also supports cross-product interoperability efforts, such as the Data Model and Schema Consensus (DaMaSC) initiative.
“I’m excited to co-lead the Discovery Work Stream, a group I’ve had a great time working with over the years! I’m especially motivated to help improve alignment across GA4GH products, Driver Projects, and external initiatives. By enhancing interoperability through specifications like Beacon, Data Connect, and Discovery-focused metadata guidelines, I believe the Discovery Work Stream can help shape a more connected and accessible future for genomics and other -omics data sharing.” —David Bujold |
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Miro Cupak is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at DNAstack, where he builds federated data sharing networks and technology for deriving AI-powered insights from sensitive -omics and health data. Within GA4GH, he serves as Product Lead for Data Connect and is a long-standing member of the Discovery Work Stream, with leadership on the Service Registry and Service Info standards and contributions to the Beacon Network and early Beacon protocol.
“New discoveries depend on access to more and better data, yet health data remains hard to find and use. I am honoured to serve as Co-Lead of the Discovery Work Stream and to help advance its mission to build an internet for -omics and health research by aligning and connecting our standards, driving adoption, and enabling AI-native discovery and search at global scale.” — Miro Cupak |
Infectious Disease Community of Interest
In partnership with the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE), the GA4GH Infectious Disease (ID) Community provides a forum for international organisations to convene and discuss standards development focused on the use of genomic data to efficiently diagnose and treat infectious diseases. The ID Community aims to align its outputs with FAIR principles to ensure genomic data is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Re-usable. This emerging Community of Interest will be led by Charlotte (Charlie) Barclay (Simon Fraser University), Samantha Chill (Deloitte), and Nishan Katuwal (Dhulikhel Hospital Kathmandu University Hospital, Nepal; Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway).
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Charlotte (Charlie) Barclay is an ontologist at the Centre for Infectious Disease Genomics and One Health (CIDGOH), with expertise in data structures and modelling across pathogen genomics, public health, and biodiversity. She specialises in ontologies and metadata frameworks to standardise and integrate data in support of FAIR principles. Passionate about the intersection of environmental pressures and infectious disease, Barclay advocates for a holistic One Health approach, integrating environmental monitoring with genomic data. As a member of the PHA4GE working group, and active contributor of the GA4GH Experiments Metadata working group and Data Security Work Stream, she is keen to foster interoperability between GA4GH and PHA4GE to advance global collaboration and data standards in infectious disease research.
“To effectively address infectious diseases, we need a holistic approach that integrates environmental data with pathogen genomic and human research. I’m excited to bring my experience at PHA4GE to contribute to GA4GH’s mission to bridge these areas and foster global collaboration for better health outcomes.” — Charlotte (Charlie) Barclay |
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Samantha Chill is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Engineering Manager at Deloitte, where she leads projects at the intersection of bioinformatics, public health, and data science. With a background spanning infectious disease genomics, forensic molecular biology, and AI-driven healthcare solutions, she brings deep technical expertise and strategic vision to global health challenges. Through her work on large-scale pathogen surveillance projects and data standards development, Chill aligns closely with the GA4GH mission to promote interoperability and equitable data sharing, particularly in infectious disease research and response.
“I’m honoured to join the GA4GH Infectious Disease Community of Interest as a Co-Lead. I look forward to advancing global data standards that improve collaboration, accelerate outbreak response, and promote equitable access to infectious disease insights worldwide.” — Samantha Chill |
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Nishan Katuwal is a Molecular Biologist and in charge of the Molecular and Genome Sequencing Research Lab at Dhulikhel Hospital Kathmandu University Hospital, Nepal. He is currently pursuing his PhD in the field of molecular medicine and paediatric immunology at Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway. For the past six years, he has been doing research in the field of infectious diseases in Nepal, with national and international collaborators. He has also co-organised and led several capacity building training programmes (serology, molecular, genomics, and bioinformatics) with international partners. Katuwal believes in actively fostering a culture of collaboration, inclusivity, and knowledge-sharing to ensure a diversity of perspectives in infectious disease research and genomics.
“I believe the infectious disease community should move together for knowledge exchange. This could be based on data sharing (genomics data in global or local scale), capacity building, and through consortiums such as GA4GH. Scientific progress is strongest when interdisciplinary voices contribute. Thus, I will consistently seek to bridge gaps between laboratory research, clinical practice, and public health policy.” — Nishan Katuwal |
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