Informatician at the Natural History Museum, London.

Joined April 2008
187 Photos and videos
8 Jul 2025
After many years in the making, the first call for DiSSCo UK digitisation is out. This is just the beginning in terms of funding, but it's great to have this out. ukri.org/opportunity/digitis…
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6 Sep 2024
Just 112 records to go before DiSSCo UK reaches the 14 million records mark! dissco-uk.org/

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vsmithuk retweeted
26 Aug 2024
Very sad indeed. Stephen also did a lot of work on @Wikispecies which in turn has feed into @wikidata. He had strong opinions on many things, which he shared in numerous interesting - often lengthy - debates on @taxacom. He will indeed be missed.
Extremely sad to hear of the death of Stephen Thorpe, an amazing entomologist and valued contributor to @inaturalistnz @inaturalist His knowledge and assistance will be greatly missed. stuff.co.nz/nz-news/35039099…
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vsmithuk retweeted
Sir Patrick Vallance KCB has been appointed Minister of State (Minister for Science) in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology @SciTechgovuk.
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3 May 2024
A very useful paper by @MegBalk with @hlapp and colleagues we start to work up the image infrastructure needs for dissco-uk.org/ - see besjournals.onlinelibrary.wi…

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vsmithuk retweeted
3 Apr 2024
None other than @ScienceMagazine tells of the great achievement of @DiSSCoUK and highlights the truly global relevance of our efforts at @DiSSCoEU to drive mass-scale digitisation of our natural collections and make them available for all. #biodiversity 👉 science.org/content/article/…
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The digitisation of butterflies and other historic specimens @NHM_London could help scientists prevent future pandemics and support biodiversity 🦋 Our £473 million investment into research will allow our brightest minds to thrive & build a more prosperous UK 🇬🇧
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vsmithuk retweeted
OPPORTUNITY: We're seeking proposals for a systematic review of scientific literature published between 2020 and 2024 that relies on data from the GBIF network—a fixed-term assignment analysing patterns and trends in use of GBIF-enabled research. Details: gbif.org/news/4NBqq6IfjVYLwX…
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26 Jan 2024
Open access research outputs receive more diverse citations. Huang, CK. et al. Scientometrics (2024). doi.org/10.1007/s11192-023-0…
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vsmithuk retweeted
12 Dec 2023
Congrats to our Curator of Diptera & Aquatic Insects Torsten Dikow on this new role! 🎉
😊Honoured to welcome Dr Torsten Dikow as our Editor-in-Chief!🎉 👏Expert in #Diptera and #cybertaxonomy, @TDikow is currently a #researcher and #curator of dipterans and aquatic insects at @NMNH (@smithsonian). 👉Read more: zookeys.pensoft.net/news/516 #zoology #taxonomy #entomology
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vsmithuk retweeted
Since January 2023, scientist have contributed a fantastic 722 new research papers to science on topics from human health to extinction. Find out more about how we are creating solutions from and for nature with our scientific work in our latest article nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023…
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13 Dec 2023
Fantastic opportunity for a new project manager at @NHM_Science, joining the @DiSSCoUK team - careers.nhm.ac.uk/templates/…
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Absolutely *loved* taking part in @NHM_Explorers's "Build A Museum" today, talking maths natural sciences. Thank you to the brilliant @ThenSheAppears for everything, the awesome folks who voted #TeamMaths, and the wonderful @sarumahdi for this woosh selfie w. lego kakapo.😍
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iBOL's Scientific Director, Paul Hebert & the @CBG_UofG #Innovation unit team have demonstrated that 100,000 #DNAbarcodes can be sequenced in a single @nanopore run at high accuracy and low cost. biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/…
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vsmithuk retweeted
1 Dec 2023
🆕In a new guest blog post, @cabbageleek takes a look at the potential of AI & #machinelearning "to democratise" #biological collections. 🖊️The guest post is a follow-up of a forum paper recently published in @BioDataJournal. #Biodiversity #BiCIKL_H2020 blog.pensoft.net/2023/12/01/…
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vsmithuk retweeted
9 Dec 2023
Contribute to this important step oft #standard development! #collecton #description #biodiversity
Public review of the Latimer Core has begun and will run through 12 Jan 2024 tdwg.org/news/2023/latimer-c… This @tdwg proposed standard supports representation & discovery of natural science collections and groups of objects contained in them. @SPNHC @EntCollNet @Pensoft @GBIF
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