DL.org Staff

The DL.org Consortium is made up of four partner institutions: CNR-ISTI, project co-ordinator, University of Athens, University of Glasgow and Trust-IT Services Ltd. Key staff members are presented below.

CNR-ISTI (National Research Council of Italy - Institute of Information Science & Technologies)

Donatella Castelli

Donatella Castelli - Project co-ordinator & Leader of the content working group

Donatella Castelli, a senior researcher at CNR-ISTI, is the scientific co-ordinator of DL.org, leading project planning, monitoring and assessment, the Working Group on Content and serving as a member of the Architecture Working Group. Her research interests include digital libraries content and architecture modelling and interoperability. Donatella graduated in Computer Science at the University of Pisa and since 1987 has worked at CNR-ISTI, playing a key role in a number of EU and nationally funded projects on Digital Libraries and Research Infrastructures, such as ERCIM Digital Library-DELOS, DELOS, ECHO, SCHOLNET (Scientific Coordinator), CYCLADES, Open Archives Forum, and D-Lib Competence Center, DILIGENT (Scientific Coordinator), DRIVER and BELIEF. In the framework of the DELOS FP6 NoE, she led the activity dedicated to the production of the DELOS Reference Model for Digital Libraries. She is currently scientific co-ordinator of the D4Science project .

Costantino Thanos

Costantino Thanos - Leader of Project Management (work package 6) and Chair of the Quality Assurance Task Force (QATF)


Costantino Thanos is a research director currently affiliated to the Institute of Information Science & Technologies (ISTI), National Research Council of Italy. He graduated in Electronics Engineering at the University of Pisa and has been working at CNR-ISTI since 1970. His research interests include digital libraries, centralised/distributed multimedia databases, multimedia information retrieval and information engineering. He was the Scientific Coordinator of the DELOS Network of Excellence on Digital Libraries and has been the Scientific Coordinator of a number of EU-funded projects. He has served as Chairman as well as member of the Programme Committee of many international conferences.

Leonardo Candela

Leonardo Candela – Leader of Digital Library Models and Patterns

(work package 3)

Leonardo Candela is a researcher at Networked Multimedia Information Systems (NMIS) Laboratory of the Institute of Information Science & Technologies, National Research Council of Itlay (ISTI - CNR).His research interests include Digital Library [Management] Systems and Architectures, Digital Libraries Models, Distributed Information Retrieval, and Grid Computing. He is member of the Open Archive Initiative - Object Reuse & Exchange (OAI-ORE) Liaison Group. He graduated in Computer Science in 2001 at the University of Pisa and completed a PhD in Information Engineering in 2006 at the same institution. In 2001 he joined the NMIS Laboratory. Since then he has been involved in the CYCLADES, Open Archives Forum, DELOS, DILIGENT, DRIVER and D4Science projects. He was also an active member of the DELOS working group on the Digital Library Reference Model. In DL.org, Leonardo is also leader of the Architecture Working Group.

University of Athens (NKUA)

Yannis Ioannidis

Yannis Ioannidis – Leader of Thematic Working Groups on Interoperability: Definition and Operation (work package 2)

Yannis Ioannidis is currently Professor at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Athens. His research interests include database and information systems, digital libraries, personalisation, scientific systems and workflows, eHealth systems, and human-computer interaction, topics on which he has published over seventy articles in leading journals and conferences.Within DL.org,Yannis serves as Scientific Chair of the Working Group on Users and a member of the Functionality Working Group.

He received his Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1982, his MSc in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University, and his PhD degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. He has been a (co-)principal investigator in over thirty research projects funded by various government agencies (USA, Europe, Greece) or private enterprise. He is currently an Associate Editor of several journals (Information Systems, Journal of Digital Libraries, Journal of Intelligent Information Systems, and Journal of Digital Curation) and has been a member of the programme committees of over sixty conferences.

Eleni Toli

Eleni Toli – Leader of DL.org Events (work package 4) & eTraining

Eleni Toli has been working at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications at the University of Athens since 2004 and has been involved in the technical and financial coordination of several EU-funded projects. Her main expertise is on the organization and leading of workshops, the development of customised self-assessment methods and the implementation of evaluation procedures. She has a solid background of project management having worked as an officer for a number of German and Greek consulting companies. She holds an MSc degree in Labour Economics from the University of Bochum and a BS from the University of Ioannina. Eleni serves as rapporteur in the Functionality Working Group.

George Athanasopoulos

George Athanasopoulos – Leader of Functionality Working Group. DL.org eTraining

George Athanasopoulos, a researcher at the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA). In DL.org he leads the Functionality Working Group. He is also a member of DL.org's Quality Assurance Task Force (QATF). He holds a diploma from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics of the University of Patras and has participated in various research and development projects (e.g. SECSE, SODIUM, Interop-NOE) during his work experience. His research interests include service-oriented computing with a focus on the context-adaptable composition of heterogeneous services comprising various types of services e.g. Web services (either stateless or stateful), P2P services, sensor and actuator services, system interoperability, distributed systems and software architecture modeling as well as modern programming methodologies.

Anna Nika

Anna Nika - DL.org eTraining & Working Groups

Anna Nika is a member of the University of Athens (NKUA), responsible for various activities in DL.org, including her participation in the User Working Group with the role of rapporteur. Anna received her B.Sc. degree (with honours) from the Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, NKUA in 2007 and is currently completing her postgraduate studies in the field of Communication Systems and Networks at the same department.

University of Glasgow - Humanities Advanced Technology & Information Institute

Seamus Ross

Seamus Ross – Founding Director of the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute

Seamus Ross is the founding Director of the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow, serving as professor of Humanities Informatics and Digital Curation (1997-2008) and as Associate Director of the Digital Curation Centre in the UK (2004-2008). He is currently Dean of the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on digital preservation including work on preservation, repository design, digital library design and services, ingest, and semantic metadata extraction.

Seamus has played key roles in several funded initiatives on digital libraries and preservation, acting as Principal Director of DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) and a partner in Planets - Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services. He was also a co-principal investigator in the DELOS Digital Libraries Network of Excellence (2002-2008) and Principal Director of ERPANET, a European Commission activity to enhance the preservation of cultural heritage and scientific digital objects. Within DL.org, Seamus serves as a member of the Policy and Quality Working Groups.

Perla Innocenti

Perla Innocenti – Leader of DL.org Summer School

Perla Innocenti is a Research Fellow at the Humanities Advanced Technology Institute (HATII), University of Glasgow. She is DL.org Co-Principal Investigator, leader of the Policy Working Group and leader of training at the project's Summer School (2010). She is also Co-Principal Investigator in the EU-funded project Sustaining Heritage Access through Multivalent ArchiviNg (SHAMAN). Perla was involved in repository design and audit research as part of DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) and Digital Curation Centre (DCC), co-ordinating activities and development for the Digital Repository Audit Method Base on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) Toolkit.

Perla has contributed to usage models research within the project Preservation and Long-term Access through NETworked Services (Planets), to the investigation of the potential application of the DRAMBORA toolkit in the context of digital libraries within the DELOS project and to the refinement of the DELOS Reference Model in relation to digital preservation. Her research interests include digital preservation methodologies and technologies, audit and risk assessment for digital repositories,  digital libraries design and usage models and digitization methodologies.

Giuseppina Vullo

Giuseppina Vullo - Leader of the Quality working group

Giuseppina Vullo is a researcher at the Humanities Advanced Technology Institute (HATII), University of Glasgow. Her research interests range from quality to contextualisation in digital libraries and enhancement of special collections within digital environments. She was a DigitalPreservationEurope Exchange (DPEX) fellow at HATII in 2008, where she worked on digital collections assessment, applying Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment (DRAMBORA) and InterPARES 3 methodologies. She completed a PhD in Library Science and has previously worked in university libraries and international institutes in Italy and Switzerland. Within DL.org she leads the Quality Working Group and supports training through the summer school.

Trust-IT Services Ltd

Silvana Muscella

Silvana Muscella - Director of Trust-IT Services

Silvana Muscella focuses on high-level coordination and on strategic marketing and communication developments on ICT. Silvana maintains an active interest in finding new user communities (scientific and enterprise) for the adoption of distributed computing applications, exploring avenues on internationalisation and providing editorial support on ICT content for businesses and academia. She has provided strategic support to one of Europe’s flagship projects, EGEE-II & EGEE-III (Enabling Grids for EsciencE), as well as EchoGRID (European and Chinese Cooperation on Grids). She is the European director of the OGF.eeig (European Chapter of the Open Grid Forum), technical co-ordinator of the OGF-Europe - Mobilizing and Integrating Communities on Grid Standards & Best Practices Globally project, serving also on OGF’s Board of Director’s, and co-ordinating OGF-Europe’s Industry Expert Group. With a BA (hons) in Languages and Economics, Silvana possesses over twelve years of hands-on experience in European, National and Regionally funded programmes and in project management and coordination.

Stephanie Parker

Stephanie Parker – Dissemination & Training (work package 5)

Stephanie Parker is a project manager with extensive experience of working with enterprise, research organizations, and international press and media, particularly in the areas of ICT and distributed computing. She is involved in a number of EC-funded projects, currently serving as Chair of EGEE-III’s Business Forum, leading dissemination and international outreach in OGF-Europe and acting as a communications expert in Gridipedia, which is funded by BEinGRID, Europe’s largest Integrated Project under the 6th Framework Programme.

She co-ordinated the first European ICT Pavilion at an international trade fair, CommunicAsia-EnterpriseIT, June 2007, Singapore through the EC-funded BASIC project, facilitating enterprises in expanding their business networks in the South Pacific. Since then has also provided support to EchoGRID, co-ordinating the 1st EchoGRID-EUChinaGRID International Conference, April 2007, Beijing, China, fostering EU press and industrial relations for co-operation with China, as well as to GRL2020, Global Research Libraries of the future. Within DL.org, Stephanie also serves on the Quality Assurance Task Force (QATF).

Nicholas Ferguson

Nicholas Ferguson - Dissemination support & Digital Repository interoperability

Nicholas Ferguson is a project manager involved in several EC projects under the 7th Framework Programme, particularly initiatives related to ICT and Research Infrastructures. He is deputy technical co-ordinator of OGF-Europe and serves as co-chair of the Open Grid Forum’s (OGF) Research Group on Digital Repositories, which focuses primarily on metadata issues surrounding interoperability. He has also co-ordinated GRL2020 (Global Research Libraries) events in Europe (Pisa, March 2008) and Asia (Taiwan, February 2009), helping to connect experts from across the globe with the aim of shaping the vision for the Global Research Library in the future. Nicholas is also involved in RESERVOIR (Resources & Services Virtualisation without Barriers), a partially EC-funded project that is investigating technologies for advanced cloud computing by also fostering open source and open standards. Nicholas also participates in Gridipedia, which is funded through BEinGRID, Europe’s largest integrated project under FP6. Nicholas, who has a BA (hons) in politics and sociology from the University of Wolverhampton, possesses over 11 years of working with international individuals of a wide variety of nationalities with excellent understanding of various cultural differences.