Keynote: Towards Modular Open Science (Auditorium)

featuring Rowan Cockett (Curvenote, Continuous Science Fdn) and Matt Akamatsu (Asst. Prof, Discourse Graphs)

Presentation 10-10:45 AM

The traditional scientific record—anchored in static, monolithic PDFs and siloed journals—is increasingly ill-equipped to handle the speed and complexity of modern discovery. This keynote explores a transition toward Modular Open Science: a future where research is a continuous, federated, and computable graph of knowledge.

We outline a vision to move beyond isolated papers toward a world of interoperable research objects and introduce how the Open Exchange Architecture (OXA) and Discourse Graphs provide structural standards for this shift and can leverage the AT Protocol as a decentralized backbone. Additionally, we will discuss how tools like Curvenote and Discourse Graphs have enabled researchers to capture the computational origins of research and the granular logic of scientific inquiry in real-time, supporting networked research collaborations. Join us as we outline a roadmap for a modular ecosystem where data, code, and discourse are seamlessly integrated, verifiable, and interoperable.

Speaker Bios

Rowan Cockett

Rowan Cockett is the CEO and a founder of Curvenote (https://curvenote.com), where he leads the development of tools designed to free scientific communication from static PDF documents. Curvenote enables researchers, societies, and research institutes to publish interactive, reproducible, and richly linked scientific content, with a particular focus on computational research. By integrating narrative, data, code, and figures into cohesive, reusable research objects, Curvenote reflects how modern science is conducted.

Rowan is also a founder of the Continuous Science Foundation (https://continuousfoundation.org), a nonprofit organization for the next generation of scientific communication. Through this work, he helps lead the development of shared, open standards, including the Open Exchange Architecture (OXA, https://oxa.dev), which support modular, interoperable, and machine-actionable scientific content. These standards aim to enable experimentation, reuse, and long-term preservation across tools, publishers, and research communities, supporting a more continuous and composable model of science.

In addition, Rowan serves on the steering council for JupyterBook and MyST Markdown (https://mystmd.org), part of the Project Jupyter ecosystem. These widely adopted open-source tools support authoring and publishing of computational and scientific content, and Rowan has played a key role in shaping their technical direction and integration with emerging content standards.

Rowan holds a Ph.D. in computational geophysics from the University of British Columbia (UBC). While at UBC, he helped found SimPEG (https://simpeg.xyz), an open-source simulation and parameter-estimation framework for geophysical applications including electromagnetics, fluid flow, and gravity. SimPEG is now used across academia, national laboratories, and industry worldwide.

Rowan has received multiple awards for innovative research dissemination and open educational resources, including Visible Geology, an interactive geoscience modeling application used by over one million students globally. Prior to founding Curvenote, Rowan was Vice President of Cloud Architecture at Seequent, where he led large teams building computational platforms, visualization tools, and version-control systems for geoscientists.

Matt Akamatsu

Matt Akamatsu is an Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Washington. He is also the cofounder of the Discourse Graphs Project, an organization supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and Navigation Fund creating systems and software tools for modular research collaboration in the age of AI.  He is a recipient of the 2020 Porter Prize for Research Excellence from the American Society for Cell Biology, K99 Pathway to Independence Award, and The Experiment Foundation's Beyond The Journal award.

Matt Akamatsu received his PhD in the department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry at Yale University as the first student in Yale’s Integrated Graduate Program in Physics, Engineering and Biology. His postdoctoral work at UC Berkeley (...WIP!)

Building AT Science: Infrastructure (Auditorium)

featuring talks from Ronen Tamari, Maria Antoniak, and Aaron White

Presentations 10-10:45 AM

10:00 AM Presentation

10:15 AM Presentation

10:30 AM Presentation

AI/Data on ATProto (Auditorium)

featuring talks from Martin Karlsson, Dr. Maxine Levesque, and Dr. Sean Jungbluth

Presentations 11:00-11:45 AM

11:00 AM Presentation

11:15 AM Presentation

11:30 AM Lightning

Sensemaking Systems (Auditorium)

featuring lightning talks from Travis Simpson, Alex Garcia-Joyner, and Anish Lakhwara

Presentations 11:45-12:15 PM

11:45 Lightning

11:55 Lightning

12:05 Lightning

Can decentralists cooperate? Rethinking commons and collective action in the age of platforms and AI (Lounge)

a conversation with Laure Haak, Ellie DeSota, and Nick Vincent (tbc)

Workshop 11-12:15 PM

Building AT Science: Community (Auditorium)

featuring presentations from Dr. Emily Hunt, Dr. Teon Brooks, and Dr. Scott McGrath

Presentations 13:15-13:50 PM

13:15 PM Presentation

13:30 PM Lightning Talk

13:40 PM Lightning Talk

Future of Science Social Media (Auditorium)

panel featuring Dr. Scott McGrath, Maria Antoniak, Ariel Lighty, and Ronen Tamari (more details soon)

Panel 13:50-14:30 PM

Sensemaking Systems + AI for Science (Lounge)

demos from Travis Simpson, Alex Garcia-Joyner, Anish Lakhwara, Semble, Martin Karlsson, and Sean Jungbluth

Workshop 13:15-14:30 PM

Social Media Research (Auditorium)

featuring presentations from Jay Patel, Vikas Reddy, Sophie Greenwood, Francisco Carvalho, and Billy Pierce

Presentations 14:45-15:50 PM

14:45 PM Lightning Talk

14:55 PM Lightning Talk

15:05 PM Presentation

15:20 PM Presentation

15:35 PM Presentation

Building ATScience: Sustainability (Lounge)

A conversation with Mathew Lowry, Ronen Tamari (Semble), Brendan (Leaflet), Tyler Fisher (Sill) and others (tbc).

Workshop 14:45-15:50 PM

We'll meet in the lounge to unpack, discuss, tear apart and rebuild the following idea:

We already have four five speakers, but drop me a line if you'd like to contribute and I'll update the outline agenda (to be agreed when we get started):

• Short scene-setter for atproto-curious scientists: What is ATProto, how does it work, and why should I care? (Mathew)

• First steps up the value chain (Mathew):

  • Organise your Bluesky footprint with starter packs and custom feeds (source: How newsrooms, scientific institutions & governments can best use Bluesky, Mathew, Nov 2025)

  • What It Means for Universities to Run Their Own PDS (source: The Potential of DID as Academic Infrastructure, Nighthaven)

• What would a research team website look like? Part 1: Leaflet, Standard.site and Atmospheric publishing (Bernard Schlagel - see also Atmospheric Publishing Discussion, just after this session)

• Collective knowledge discovery & sensemaking

  • From MySill to OurSill (Tyler Fisher - see also Rethinking the Client: Why User Choice is the Key to Growth for ATProto, during AtmoshereConf)

  • Aggregating Semble and Margin (Ronen - see also Semble: A social knowledge network for research on ATProto, in the Building AT Science: Infrastructure session, 10-10:45)

  • The web as a socially annotated layer of context (Travis - see also Skysquare is context as a service, in the Sensemaking Systems session, 11:45-12:15)

• What would a research team website look like? Part 2 (Mathew): combining the above

• Discussion: what do the Universities in the room think?