ripeta Team

Leslie McIntosh, PhD

Vice President, Research Integrity, Digital Science, Founder, Ripeta

Leslie McIntosh, PhD

Dr Leslie McIntosh PhD, MPH, is the VP of Research Integrity at Digital Science and co-founder of Ripeta. She works to strengthen research processes and investigate and reduce misinformation and disinformation in science. Dr McIntosh holds a Master's and PhD in public health with concentrations in biostatistics and epidemiology from Saint Louis University, and a Certificate in Women’s Leadership Forum from Washington University Olin’s School of Business. As an academic turned entrepreneur, with a background in biomedical informatics, Dr McIntosh has dedicated her career to improving science. Since 2014, this has focused on highlighting the need for reproducible science, transparently reporting science, and the need to build trust in science. Dr McIntosh co-founded Ripeta in 2017 to improve research quality and integrity. The technology developed by Ripeta is a world leader in detecting trust markers of research manuscripts. Dr McIntosh works around the globe with governments, publishers, institutions, and companies to improve research and scientific decision-making. She has given hundreds of talks including to the US-NIH, NASA, and World Congress on Research Integrity, and consulted with the US, Canadian, and European governments. Dr McIntosh’s work was the most-read RetractionWatch post of 2022.

Cynthia Hudson Vitale, MA

Co-Founder

Cynthia Hudson Vitale, MA

Cynthia R. Hudson Vitale, MA is a co-Founder of ripeta. She has over six years of experience providing research data services support to scientific principal investigators in a variety of domains, specifically in the areas of data management and data curation. She has worked with faculty on projects to facilitate data sharing and interoperability while meeting faculty research data needs throughout the research life-cycle. Her current research seeks to improve research reproducibility, addressing both technical and cultural barriers.

Mary Uhlmansiek, MA

Business Operations Director

Mary Uhlmansiek, MA

Mary Uhlmansiek, MA, has an educational background in Clinical and Experimental Psychology. She has over twenty-five years of experience in academic research, including: supporting and promoting initiatives related to data-sharing and research reproducibility; developing research data use policies; implementing software solutions for research operations and data management; facilitation of institutional research workflow changes and lean process improvements; managing research datasets across several NIH grants; supervising research and operational support personnel; conducting regulatory review of research; and performing community outreach for a sensitive research program assessing the impact of interpersonal trauma and PTSD.

Nicholas Bailey

Senior NLP Data Scientist

Nicholas Bailey

Nicholas Bailey is an expert in the way machines interpret natural languages (the languages humans use to talk to one another) and is passionate about keeping science objective, honest and reproducible. He has worked as a data scientist in the legal and scientific publishing sectors for many years. He was previously at the Royal Society of Chemistry. As a gifted scientific communicator, Nicholas regularly speaks at conferences and provides mentoring for early-career data scientists and developers. Outside of his work with Ripeta, Nicholas researches deep reinforcement learning and emergent languages at City University of London.

Pritha Sarkar

Jr. NLP Data Scientist

Pritha Sarkar

Pritha has a degree in Computer Science and is currently studying for a Masters in Data Science at University of Glasgow. She has experience in teaching teenage girls a variety of aspects of technology, in order to introduce them to the world of coding and science. She thrives on constant learning and problem solving.

Kenneth Obando

Data Engineer

Kenneth Obando

Kenneth is passionate about technology and education, with strong moral and professional principles. He has a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Tecnológico de Costa Rica. Kenneth has conducted research in "text analytics", machine learning, statistical analysis of multispectral data, configuration and testing of clusters and is a valued contributor to our engineering team.

Ruth Whittam, MS

Data Science Team Lead

Ruth Whittam, MS

Ruth Whittam, MS has a Master of Science in Data Science from Saint Louis University. Ruth has solid experience aggregating, wrangling, and manipulating the data from electronic health records for clinical and financial reporting, honing her skills for data science and machine learning. She leads the Ripeta Data Science team.

Shane Jackson

Client Support Analyst

Shane Jackson

A seasoned Data Analyst with significant experience in data analysis, curation and visualization. Highly proficient with R, SQL, Python and applications such as Business Objects and Microsoft Power BI. Shane has management experience, leading and mentoring other data analysts. As a Client Support Analyst, Shane will bring these experiences to supporting Ripeta clients; from initial discussions of interest to full deployment, ongoing training and long-term support.

Raquel Miranda

Data Engineer

Raquel Miranda

Raquel has a degree in Computer Science Engineering from Tecnológico de Costa Rica. She has technical experiences in and is passionate about research and development in STEM fields and a developer of artificial intelligence technologies.

Misha Kidambi, MS

Science Communications Specialist

Misha Kidambi, MS

Misha Kidambi has worked in the field of science communication for over 10 years. She has a double masters, one in Microbiology and the other in Science and Technology Journalism. Prior to joining Ripeta, she worked in international research and academic sectors to implement communication strategies that helped raise the profile of organizations and the work done by them. She has extensive experience in multichannel communications tailored to wide-ranging audiences: from stakeholders and policy-makers, the press, students and educators, to scientific and non-scientific communities.