Our People
Every PLOS article is a collaboration. Each of our journals is supported by a dedicated Board of volunteer editors with specific knowledge in their field, as well as thousands of reviewers who dedicate their time and expertise to ensure the quality of everything we publish. Working in partnership with our passionate internal staff, we are transforming research communication so that anyone, anywhere can read, share, and reuse the latest scientific discoveries.
Alastair Adam
Chair of the Board
Co-CEO, FlatWorld
Suresh Bhat
CFO and Treasurer,
Hewlett Foundation
Israel Borokini
Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, United States
Fernan Federici
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and iBio Millenium Institute
Jenny Machida
Partner, PwC
Alison Mudditt
Chief Executive Officer
Emily Sena
Chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh
Steven Tom
Senior Vice President, Adtalem Global Education
Simine Vazire
Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Board of Directors
Alastair Adam
Chair of the Board; Co-CEO FlatWorld
Alastair Adam received his MA in Law from Cambridge University in 1993. He worked in corporate finance and M&A for Cazenove & Co. in London, before following his wife back to Boston in 1998, where he joined The Parthenon Group, a strategy consulting firm. In 2002, he co-founded The Callidon Group, providing growth strategy and transaction advice to businesses and investors in the Information and Publishing space, including in scientific and scholarly publishing. In 2007, Callidon joined OC&C Strategy Consultants, a multinational firm. In 2014, Alastair led the sale of the business to Oliver Wyman, part of the Marsh & McLelland Companies. He left Oliver Wyman in 2015, to pursue direct investments in Information and Publishing. In August 2016, he and his long-time business partner, John Eielson, acquired FlatWorld with a mission to bring college textbook prices back down to earth. FlatWorld’s high quality, affordable titles are now used by professors in over 1,900 institutions across North America.
Suresh Bhat
CFO, Hewlett Foundation
Suresh Bhat received his B.A. and M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at University of California, Berkeley. He is currently CFO and Treasurer at the Hewlett Foundation, prior to that, he was CFO at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. Previously, he headed business finance for the Institutional Client and BlackRock Solutions businesses at BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, overseeing all aspects of financial planning, budgeting, forecasting and analysis. He has held senior roles in financial management and financial planning at Barclay’s Global Investors, where he helped lead its sale to BlackRock, and Charles Schwab & Co., Inc., where he served as division CFO for retail distribution, retirement service and international businesses. He began his career at Deloitte & Touche and served in various finance roles at Bank of America.
Israel Borokini
Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Montana State University, Bozeman, Montana, United States
Dr. Israel Borokini is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Ecology, Montana State University (MSU), Bozeman, Montana, United States. His research focuses on combining ecological, geospatial, genomic, and phylogenetic data to elucidate the patterns of plant community assemblages and biodiversity across multiple scales and the eco-evolutionary mechanisms that generate and maintain them. He heads the Conservation Ecology and Biogeography lab at MSU where students and postdoctoral scholars are mentored to carry out relevant scientific investigations and grow their careers. Dr. Borokini completed his Ph.D. in the Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology graduate program at the University of Nevada, Reno. Originally from Nigeria, he has published over 60 papers focusing on conservation and landscape genetics, species distribution modeling, invasion ecology, conservation science, and Indigenous and local knowledge. He also listed two species in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, and is a co-author of the IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species global assessment. He is an Associate Editor for two scientific journals and he has peer reviewed over 100 manuscripts for several journals.
Fernan Federici
Assistant Professor, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and iBio Millenium Institute
Dr. Fernan Federici is an assistant professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (PUC) and iBio Millenium Institute. He studied two years of Agricultural Engineering at Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, received his B.S. in Biology from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and his Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Fernan has worked as a junior research assistant at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and as an international visiting fellow at OpenPlant Centre at the University of Cambridge. His main interest is understanding emergent pattern formation in biological systems. His group and collaborators apply synthetic biology tools and biophysical modeling to address these questions in bacterial populations. He has been a champion of Open Science in a number of areas including protocols and reagents, where he contributes to Reclone (the Reagent Collaboration Network). Fernan’s research group also works on the promotion and development of Free/Libre Open Source technologies for research and education in molecular biology and bioengineering. The group is part of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware community (GOSH) and the CYTED-reGOSH network for open technologies in Latin America.
Jenny Machida
Partner, PwC
Jenny Machida received her BA summa cum laude from Yale University and her MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Machida brings over 15 years of strategy, management consulting and business development experience to her role as Deals Partner at PwC. Prior to working at PwC, Machida was Managing Director at IMB Development where she focused on strategic advisory and planning work for client and partner companies. She co-founded and served as Chief Business Officer at the startup medical diagnostics company Sevident and was Associate Director of a research and advisory center at Columbia University focused on advancing diversity in higher education institutions. She was a Principal at Booz & Company and a Principal and co-founder of the Healthcare and Diversity & Inclusion practice areas at Katzenbach Partners, advising large corporations on competitive strategy, organizational performance and leadership alignment. Past clients include General Motors, the Campbell Soup Company, Pfizer, Aetna and the City of Chicago. Machida serves as Board Chair for e&e Technical Consultants and Executive Vice President at Kerma Medical Products.
Alison Mudditt
Chief Executive Officer
Alison Mudditt joined PLOS as Chief Executive Officer in June, 2017, where her primary role is to ensure PLOS’s continuous innovation, bold leadership, and mission-driven differentiation in scientific communication. Prior to PLOS, Alison served as Director of the University of California Press for six years where she ushered in new strategies to lead the Press into the digital age and as Executive Vice President at SAGE Publications, leading publishing programs across books, journals and digital platforms. Her 30 years in the publishing industry also include leadership positions at Blackwell Publishers in Oxford, UK, and Taylor & Francis Inc., in Philadelphia. Alison is a frequent speaker at industry meetings and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Center for Open Science and the Society for Scholarly Publishing, and on the Advisory Board for the Authors’ Alliance. In the past, Alison has also served on the Board of ALPSP, as Vice Chair of the Scientific Publications Committee and a member of the Open Science Committee for the American Heart Association; on the Executive Council of the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the American Association of Publishers; and as Co-Chair of the Dean’s Leadership Council at California State University, Channel Islands.
Emily Sena
Chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine, University of Edinburgh
Professor Emily Sena holds a personal chair in Meta-science and Translational Medicine at the Centre for Clinical Brain Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. She specializes in the validity of preclinical research and is a passionate advocate for open science. Her research interests are in the use of meta-research approaches (research on research) to drive improvements in the validity, transparency, reporting and reproducibility of primary research using laboratory models of human diseases. Her work has informed laboratory practice guidelines, editorial policy and clinical trials design. Emily was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief of BMJ Open Science and is on the managing board of PCI Registered Reports and convenor of CAMARADES – an international collaboration that supports, advances and undertakes systematic reviews of preclinical research. She also co-founded and was co-convenor of the Edinburgh Race Equality Network, now convenes the University of Edinburgh Race Equality and Anti-Racist Sub-Committee. She is highly committed to engendering and facilitating an anti-racist culture across campus, and diversity and inclusivity in academia.
Steven Tom
Senior Vice President, Adtalem Global Education
Steven Tom is a senior vice president, chief customer officer at Adtalem Global Education. In this role, Steven partners with Adtalem’s institutions to optimize student experiences, develop differentiated learning offerings and solutions, build strategic employer partnerships, and harvest data and analytics to further drive value-added insights across all of the company’s institutions. In addition, Tom oversees information technology including application development, infrastructure operations and enterprise architecture. Prior to joining Adtalem, Steven was most recently chief transformation officer and senior vice president, student experience for Walden University. He obtained a Master of Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management and his bachelor’s degree in both information technology and marketing from the University of Maryland. He serves on two non-profit boards, the International Youth Foundation and the World Trade Center Institute in Baltimore.
Simine Vazire
Professor, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, University of Melbourne
Dr. Simine Vazire is a professor in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne. She has two lines of research. One examines people’s self-knowledge of their personality and behaviour and another line of research examines the individual and institutional practices and norms in science, and the degree to which these norms encourage or impede self-correction and credibility. She is Editor in Chief of Collabra: Psychology and has served as an editor at several other journals. She is a board member of the Public Library Of Science and the Berkeley Institute for Transparency in the Social Sciences, was a member of the US National Academy of Science study committee on replicability and reproducibility, and co-founded the Society for the Improvement of Psychological Science (SIPS).
Richard Wilder
Private Practice
Richard Wilder started his professional life in engineering and then studied law – with a particular focus on intellectual property law. Over the past two decades his focus has been on global public health law – including establishing organizations and leading the development of agreements to enable the development, manufacture and distribution of drugs, vaccines and diagnostics intended for global use. A common thread running through Richard’s work in recent years has been how best to ensure access, including how to ensure access to the artifacts of scientific research, including published materials, data, software code and biological materials. While serving as a legal advisor to the Global Health Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Richard led the development of the open access policy for publications arising from work funded by the foundation. As General Counsel and Director, Legal and Business Development at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, he directed the legal and business development affairs of CEPI during its initial start-up phase and through the first two years of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Richard also served as a committee member of the Roundtable on Aligning Incentives for Open Science convened by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.
Keith Yamamoto
UCSF, Vice Chancellor for Science Policy and Strategy
Dr. Keith Yamamoto received his B.S. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Iowa State University and his Ph.D. in Biochemical Sciences from Princeton University. At UCSF, he has served in several significant leadership roles including chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology, vice dean for research in the School of Medicine, and vice chancellor for research. Yamamoto has also chaired or served on numerous national committees focusing on a wide range of policy and education efforts for researchers and the public. He chairs the Coalition for the Life Sciences and sits on both the National Academy of Medicine Executive Committee and the National Academy of Sciences Division of Earth and Life Studies Advisory Committee. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Academy of Microbiology, and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.