Dr. Arfon Smith
Dr. Arfon Smith is a Senior Fellow at Schmidt Sciences on the Science Systems team. His current interests span research software and the evolving role of research software engineers – including how generative AI is reshaping the practice and identity of research software engineering – research data-management infrastructure, and AI as a science accelerator, from differentiable simulation codes and ML surrogates to new models for automation, participation, and innovation in research. Arfon is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Open Source Software (JOSS), a co-founder of the Zooniverse citizen-science platform, and holds a visiting appointment at the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Prior to Schmidt Sciences, Arfon was a Director of Product at GitHub, where he led AI product development including GitHub Copilot. With extensive product, data science, and engineering background – especially in open source – he loves building deep partnerships across product, design, data science, and engineering and is fluent in the language of each. Arfon has led teams across organizations of varied sizes, scales, and sectors, including founding and leading the Data Science Mission Office at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, home of the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope.