The first Executive Director of the World Data System (WDS) has been named. He is Dr Mustapha Mokrane, currently Science and Information Technology Officer at ICSU’s Secretariat in Paris. He will take up his appointment in early March 2012.

Mokrane holds a MSc and PhD from the Université de la Méditerranée, Marseille, France in the field of Biology/Bioinformatics, having carried out work on developmental, genetic and cellular aspects of eukaryote biology. His postgraduate research experience includes a spell at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany.

In 2002 Mokrane joined the ICSU Secretariat as Information Technology Officer, taking up responsibility for planning and upgrading ICSU’s information systems and developing several websites. Since 2009 he has been responsible for the coordination of ICSU’s Scientific Data and Information activities. This has included supporting the work of two international scientific committees, and back-stopping the development of WDS itself. He helped draft the scientific programme of the first World Data System Conference (Kyoto, September 2011).

As Executive Director, Mokrane will head the newly established WDS International Programme Office, which is hosted by the Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT) in Tokyo. The Office is to manage and coordinate the establishment and operations of the WDS, and take responsibility for outreach and promotional activities, under the guidance of the ICSU WDS Scientific Committee.