Dr Francis Gacenga

Biography

Dr Francis Gacenga is an Information Systems Researcher and Research Infrastructure Manager with two decades of national and international experience leading IT teams and projects. Francis has worked in a variety of academic roles as a Senior Lecturer, Lecturer, Examiner, Principal Investigator, and Research Investigator. He has worked in industry as an IT Service Manager, Systems Analyst, Systems Administrator, Programmer and Trainer. He is an experienced digital research infrastructure and services manager, research data management expert and the senior digital research advisor at University of Southern Queensland (UniSQ). Francis has led successful research infrastructure and Services refresh projects for UniSQ valued at over $1.8 Million implementing data collection, processing, storage and management infrastructure and services. Francis was UniSQ’s lead on the 2022 ARDC funded, Agricultural Research Federation (AgReFed) Platforms project where he worked on making an Agriculture Drought Monitor dataset FAIR, implementing FAIR scientific workflows and exemplars for Crop Modelling and Management. In 2021 Francis was one of the six editors of the ARDC funded Institutional Underpinnings project that developed Australia’s first National Research Data Management Framework. In 2019, Francis with colleagues was awarded funding by the Australian Academy of Sciences (AAS) 2019 Theo Murphy Initiative to develop and deliver a national workshop on reproducible research to build the research data management capacity of Early and Mid-Career (EMCR) researchers. He is currently part of a team undertaking research funded by Soils Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) 2023/4_3.006 - Knowledge-guided machine-learning optimisation of soil constraint management where he is responsible for implementing FAIR aligned project research data management. He has published journals, conference articles, datasets, books, book chapters, seminars and workshops in academic and practitioner outlets on the subjects of IT Service Management, Design Science, FAIR data implementation, reproducible research and data management. He is a Senior Member of the Australian Computer Society and previously chaired the ACS Toowoomba Chapter. Francis is an active member of the research data management community and regularly participates and presents at the ARDC sponsored Research Data Management Planning Interest Group, ARDC’s Skills Development Summit and Australasian Research Management Society (ARMS). Francis has developed and delivered research training on making research data FAIR and Research Data Management offered at UniSQ and across Queensland universities. He serves on UniSQ’s Cybersecurity Committee and is UniSQ’s representative on the AgReFed Technical Committee. Francis is a certified Software Carpentry Instructor and has contributed to the development of Carpentries training materials and organised and delivered numerous workshops.

Employment

Expertise

IT Service Management, Research Data Management, Design Science

Fields of Research

• 460104. Applications in physical sciences
• 460105. Applications in social sciences and education
• 460905. Information systems development methodologies and practice
• 460908. Information systems organisation and management

Professional Membership