Cass is the Senior Research Community Manager for the Environment and Sustainability Grand Challenge, and part of the Research Community Management team within the Tools, Practices and Systems Research Programme. She works with the E&S Community to support engagement with best practices for reproducibility, interoperability and impact. She also scaffolds the growth of connections between members, to facilitate knowledge exchange, community-generated outputs and shaping of the Environment and Sustainability ecosystem.

Cass was the Community Engagement Coordinator at the University of Oxford Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging (WIN, 2020-2023), where she developed the Open WIN Community; a community-contributed documentation repository to describe why and how WIN researchers can engage with open science practices. She provided training, advice, and opportunities to contribute to infrastructure development, and lead oversite of technical planning of new computational infrastructure.

Cass’ has a PhD in Informatics (2014) and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford (2018-2020) and the University of Sussex (2014-2018). Her research used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to understand the effects and treatment of psychiatric disorders on the mind, brain and body, through pharmacological and autonomic interventions.

Cass was Co-Chair of the OHMB Open Science Room 2020, and speaks about open science and inclusivity at national and international meetings (see Zenodo entries). She is a contributor to open community tools, including Open Research Calendar and The Turing Way. She is Mother to 2 young kids and a dog, in beautiful Devon, UK.