Phoenix Bioinformatics is pleased to welcome three new members to our Board of Directors: Mathew Lau, Christine Orr, and Kevin Smith.

Members of the Phoenix board play a vital role in the success of our organization. Their expertise, insight, and leadership helps to advance our mission to support essential community-driven research infrastructure platforms like MorphoBank and TAIR. Together, we’re working to build a diverse research ecosystem populated by thriving digital research resources operating under a variety of funding models. These critical research tools in turn contribute to a faster, more efficient, and high-quality research system for the researchers we serve, and all of society. 

During their tenure, Mathew, Christine, and Kevin, along with the other Phoenix board members, will contribute oversight and specialized knowledge to advance key organizational goals. Those goals include investing in scientific and technological capabilities, and increasing community engagement to raise awareness about the services we offer, and the importance of FAIR research data, user-supported research platforms, and research infrastructure broadly.

Please join us in welcoming our newest members to the board. 

Mathew Lau

Mathew Lau is a seasoned finance executive with nearly three decades of experience in strategy and finance. He currently serves as CFO at the California Academy of Sciences and has held leadership roles at both for-profit and nonprofit organizations, including the Public Library of Science (PLOS) and AAA Northern California, Nevada, and Utah. Mathew brings deep expertise in financial oversight, governance, and strategic planning to the board. He is passionate about advancing science-based initiatives in ways that are both impactful and financially sustainable.

 


Christine OrrChristine Orr

Christine Orr is the Senior Director of Business and Community Development at BioOne, where she drives strategic initiatives designed to advance the mission of sustainably maximizing access to research. She has more than three decades of revenue- and communications-focused roles across mission-driven and for-profit organizations including American Institute of Physics, Ringgold, and OSA – the Optical Society. Christine is active in the scholarly publishing community and holds an MLS from Long Island University.

 

Kevin SmithKevin Smith

Kevin Smith recently retired as the Director of Libraries at Colby College in Maine. He is a lawyer and a librarian, and has spent years teaching librarians and faculty about copyright. For a decade he served as Director of the Office for Copyright and Scholarly Communications at Duke University. In 2016 he became the Dean of Libraries at the University of Kansas, where he also taught Copyright Law in the KU School of Law. He moved to Maine, and Colby, in 2022, where he has continued to teach an undergraduate course about copyright and the music industry. Smith is the author of numerous articles and two books about how copyright law impacts the practice of librarians and university faculty, as well as two MOOCs addressing those topics.

 

We wish to express our enormous gratitude to outgoing board members Liz Allen, Susan Au and Laure Haak for their years of service, expertise, advice, and support. Their work has been instrumental in our success to date.