ESI Conference Keynote Bios
Whitney A. Townsend is an Informationist at the Taubman Health Sciences Library at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor. She started working on systematic reviews in 2008, and has been a member of numerous systematic review, scoping review, and practice guideline teams. Whitney teaches systematic searching, methodology, and critical appraisal of evidence syntheses for residents, fellows, and faculty, and she was an instructor and course designer for the University of Michigan systematic review workshop from 2014 to 2022. Whitney led the development and publication of a set of competencies for librarians who are involved in systematic reviews that was awarded the 2018 MLA Ida and George Eliot Prize, which eventually served as the foundation of the Medical Library Association's Systematic Review Services Specialization. Recently, Whitney created the Taubman Library Talks webinar series and launched the Systematic Search Practice Sets site to provide spaces for information professionals to learn, test, and practice their systematic search skills.
Jaron Porciello is a data scientist working on evidence, data, and evaluation issues at the intersection of the science-policy interface for agriculture and food systems. She is an Associate Professor of Practice at the Lucy Family Institute for Data & Society at the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame. She is currently the lead investigator for Hesat2030: A Global Roadmap to End Hunger Nutritiously and Sustainably, a new initiative in collaboration with the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations and the Shamba Centre for Food and Climate. From 2017-2022, Jaron was the lead investigator and co-director for Ceres2030: Sustainable Solutions to End Hunger, a global effort to coordinate G-7 donor decision-making in the international effort to end hunger and transform the lives of the world’s poorest people (Sustainable Development Goal 2). Jaron holds associate scientist research appointments at Max Planck Institute for Human Development at the Center for Cognitive Rationality in Germany and the National Research Council of Italy, Institute of Information Science and Technologies. She serves as the data science partner for Research4Life, a public-private partnership of United Nations agencies, publishers, and universities through Havos.Ai, a 2021 start-up that she co-founded out of Cornell University. Jaron lives in Ithaca, New York with her family.