Keynote Speakers
Kimberly C. Doell
Kimberly C. Doell, PhD, is an environmental psychologist and head of the Environmental Collective Behaviour (ECo) Group in the Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour at the University of Konstanz. Her research focuses on understanding and promoting climate action via psychological and behavioural science, with an emphasis on identifying scalable interventions that drive meaningful change. She employs a diverse range of methodologies, including experimental, survey-based, and cross-cultural approaches. She frequently leverages Big Team Science collaborations and open, global datasets to address complex challenges in climate action.
For example, she recently co-led the International Climate Psychology Collaboration (ICPC), a global megastudy testing the effectiveness of interventions to promote climate-friendly behaviour across 63 countries, 258 researchers, and nearly 60 thousand participants. The project relied on open, standardised research practices and large-scale data-sharing, reflecting the importance of transparency, collaboration, and accessibility in advancing sustainability research. Beyond ICPC, she has played a key role in multiple other Big Team Science research initiatives, contributing to the design, execution, and analysis of projects that leverage behavioural science to support evidence-based decision-making on a range of societal challenges.
Her work bridges disciplines, integrating insights from psychology, neuroscience, and behavioural science to better understand both the individual and systemic drivers of climate action. As a strong advocate for open science, data accessibility, and interdisciplinary collaboration, she works closely with researchers across fields to ensure that research in this domain is both rigorous and actionable. Recognising the critical role of research infrastructure, digital repositories, and data-driven decision-making, she is particularly interested in how open data initiatives and research libraries can facilitate global cooperation and accelerate solutions to the climate crisis.
Thanos Giannakopoulos
Thanos Giannakopoulos is the Chief of the Information Management Section and principal librarian of the Dag Hammarskjöld Library at the United Nations Headquarters. He champions a transformative vision that reimagines the UN Library as a dynamic, accessible space for dialogue, debate, and knowledge exchange among diplomats, researchers, and communities globally. Under his leadership, the Section has strengthened its role in managing UN parliamentary and research outputs, pioneering innovations that bridge access to critical UN content. A hallmark of Thanos’ tenure is the launch and evolution of the United Nations Digital Library—a repository ensuring permanent access to UN resources, furthering the Organization’s mandate to distribute outputs widely. This innovation received the 2021 Jus Gentium Research Award from the American Society of International Law (ASIL), recognizing its impact on global research. In 2024, the system recorded over 62 million downloads from users in 12,000 locations worldwide.
Thanos has led initiatives central to the UN’s information strategy, including the Strategic Outlook for 2020-2025 (extended through 2028) and Why it Matters, a new publication series. He conceptualized and leads the UN Open Science & Scholarship Conference which in 2023 attracted over 6,000 attendees, and launched projects like the UN grey literature initiative, a linked-data service, a (G)AI prototype, a digitalization and preservation fundraising proposal, and a new information analysis workflow—all built around Open Science and Open Educational Resources principles.
Thanos holds academic degrees with distinction in Information and Communications studies. Before joining the UN, he served as Chief of Information & Data Centers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). He is a member of the SDG Academy Leadership Council and the IFLA Advisory Committee on Open Science & Scholarship.
He can be reached at: Thanos.Giannakopoulos@UN.org
Frédéric Kaplan
Frédéric Kaplan is the director of the Digital Humanities Institute and the College of Humanities at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He has worked on large-scale digitization projects and the use of artificial intelligence techniques to improve the efficiency of information extraction processes. He is also the president of the Time Machine Organisation, which facilitates the creation of digital twins for about a hundred cities, providing new access to cultural heritage in space and time.