Carole Goble

Carole Goble is a British computer scientist and academic known for work on the Semantic Web, bioinformatics, and e-Science infrastructures. She has held leadership roles at institutions including the University of Manchester, collaborated with projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Medical Research Council, and contributed to standards and tools adopted by communities spanning European Union research programmes and international consortia. Her career bridges research, infrastructure, and policy across networks such as the Open Knowledge Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, and global initiatives in data sharing.

Early life and education

Born in the United Kingdom, she completed undergraduate and postgraduate study in computing-related subjects at institutions associated with the University of Manchester academic ecosystem. During formative training she engaged with research groups tied to the Jisc community, the Wellcome Trust funding landscape, and collaborative networks that included researchers from the University of Cambridge, Imperial College London, and the University of Edinburgh. Her doctoral-level mentoring and early collaborations connected her to researchers funded by the European Commission and working within programmes influenced by the Royal Society and national research councils.

Academic career

Her academic appointments have centered at the University of Manchester where she served as a professor and held leadership positions in units interfacing with the School of Computer Science, the Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health, and multidisciplinary e‑research centres. She contributed to doctoral training partnerships involving the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council and the National Health Service research networks, and worked alongside faculty from the University of Oxford, Queen Mary University of London, and the University of Glasgow. She led teams that collaborated with partners from the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, and industrial stakeholders such as EMBL-EBI collaborators and technology companies engaged with the Open Data Institute.

Research and contributions

Her research on the Semantic Web and workflow systems addressed interoperability challenges in bioinformatics, linking ontologies, metadata standards, and tool registries used by communities including those connected to the Human Genome Project, the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health, and the Ensembl project. She contributed to workflow platforms interoperable with systems from the Apache Software Foundation ecosystem and engaged with standards bodies and consortia such as the World Wide Web Consortium, the International Society for Computational Biology, and initiatives aligned with the European Research Council. Her projects produced software, registries, and metadata schemas adopted by teams at the Cancer Research UK centres, the National Centre for Biotechnology Information, and laboratories collaborating with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. She advocated for reproducibility and data provenance aligned with practices promoted by the Royal Society of London, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the European Medicines Agency, and mentored researchers who later worked at the Broad Institute, Microsoft Research, and industrial research groups in the United States, Canada, and Germany.

Awards and honours

Her honours include recognitions associated with national and international bodies such as fellowships and awards linked to the Royal Society, the British Computer Society, and citation in programme committees for conferences organized by the Association for Computing Machinery, the International World Wide Web Conference Committee, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. She has been invited to serve on panels for funding bodies including UK Research and Innovation, the European Commission Horizon 2020 programme, and advisory boards for entities like the Wellcome Trust and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Selected publications

- Contributions to publications in venues associated with the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and journals connected to the Nature Publishing Group, the Oxford University Press, and the Public Library of Science. - Papers on workflow provenance and semantic annotations appearing alongside research from teams at the European Bioinformatics Institute, the Broad Institute, and the National Institutes of Health. - Works on interoperability, metadata, and research infrastructures cited by projects funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council.

Category:British computer scientists Category:Academics of the University of Manchester