JATS-Con 2025 Contributors List

Joni Dames, Wiley

Joni Dames is a Senior Solution Architect at Wiley who has spent over a dozen years delivering editorial and XML tools for scholarly publishing. In between providing customer support, training, workflow consulting, and an abiding commitment to the serial comma, she also participates in the JATS, BITS, and STS DTD committees.

Scott Dineen, Optica Publishing Group

Scott Dineen is the Senior Director of Publishing Production and Technology at the Optica Publishing Group and focuses on innovative use of XML and related technologies to drive product development and create production efficiencies. Scott supervises production, print, and online publishing operations for Optica's journal titles and has helped define and reach goals for production efficiency, time to publication, and technical proficiency. Scott has worked previously for the OSA as Electronic Publications Director and Managing Editor and started his career at OSA in the late 1990s as a technical copyeditor. Previously, he worked as a publications specialist in the World Bank Operations Evaluation Division and taught English as a Second Language in Central Europe. Scott has a BA and MA with concentrations in history, composition, and rhetorical theory.

Johanna L. Gribble, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Johanna L. Gribble, MA, is a Senior Medical Editor with the JHU Clinical Guidelines Program and leads electronic publication of the guidelines and social media. Before joining the JHU program in 2016, Ms. Gribble worked in medical editing for 11 years.

Mark Gross, Data Conversion Laboratory (DCL)

A recognized authority on XML implementation and digital transformations. Mark's experience and leadership focuses on developing and delivering technology-driven solutions. Under his direction, DCL uses the latest innovations in artificial intelligence, including machine learning and natural language processing, to help businesses structure data and content for modern technologies and platforms.

Mary Beth Hansen, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Mary Beth Hansen, MA, was Director of the JHU Clinical Guidelines Program from 2015 until her semi-retirement in July 2024 when she assumed responsibility for strategic project management and special projects. Ms. Hansen directed development of the program’s NCBI interface. She has served as a director of print and electronic publications in medical settings since 1996.

Jennifer R. Ham, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Jennifer R. Ham, MPH, is the Managing Editor of the JHU Clinical Guidelines Program. Before joining the program in 2016, she worked for more than 30 years in public health, medical communications, and medical editing.

Patrick Harris, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Patrick Harris is a WordPress developer and server administrator with 30 years of experience. Specializing in PHP, HTML, JavaScript, and other markup languages, he is an expert in web development, content management, electronic data interchange, and user experience design. He has hosted the JHU Clinical Guidelines Program website for more than 12 years and worked as a consultant with the program to complete an extensive overhaul and update of the WordPress content management system and to co-develop the XML redesign.

Rinke Hoekstra, Elsevier

Rachel D. Lastra is a Senior Medical Editor with the JHU Clinical Guidelines Program and primary liaison with the NCBI. Before joining the JHU program in 2018, Ms. Lastra worked in medical editing for 11 years. Ms. Lastra will complete an MA in writing with Johns Hopkins University in May 2025.

G. Ken Holman, Réalta Online Publishing Solutions Ltd.

G. Ken Holman is one of the founders of Réalta Online Publishing Solutions Limited based in Ireland offering SaaS publishing services based on JATS, NISO-STS, and DocBook. As part of Crane Softwrights Ltd. Ken has long been actively contributing to the XML community, participating in international standards development and producing quality commercial solutions for satisfied clients.

Melissa Jones, Silverchair

With over 20 years of experience at Silverchair, I've worn many hats, but my passion has always been content. As a Content Architect, I play a pivotal role in facilitating the content migration process and guiding publishers in their XML decisions. I'm also proud to lead Silverchair's Content Working Group, where we develop and maintain SCJATS and SCBITS, our unique subsets of the JATS and BITS DTDs.

Rachel D. Lastra, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Jennifer Mayfield, Optica Publishing Group

Jennifer Mayfield is the Deputy Senior Director of Electronic Publishing at Optica Publishing Group, where she oversees platform management, publishing workflows, and content dissemination for the society's digital library. With 25 years of experience in academic publishing, she nurtured the development and growth of Optics Express, the first all-electronic scientific journal in the physical sciences, and has led numerous initiatives in semantic enrichment, XML workflows, and quality control. She holds a Master of Arts in English/Linguistics from George Mason University.

Michael A. Miller, Antenna House

Charles O'Connor, Aries Systems

Edgar Schouten, Elsevier

Alexander "Sasha" Schwarzman, Optica Publishing Group

Sasha Schwarzman has 30 years of experience in markup technologies, beginning with SGML, and later with XML, XPath, Schematron, and native XML databases. As Content Technology Architect at the Optica Publishing Group, he is involved in quality control and semantic enrichment of published and converted content, as well as effective management of XML-centric workflows. Prior to joining Optica, Sasha worked as Information Systems Analyst at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and served as a co-chair of the NISO/NFAIS Working Group on Supplemental Materials to Journal Article. He holds an equivalent of Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Saint Petersburg State Polytechnic University, Russia, and a Master of Library Science degree from the University of Maryland, College Park, USA.

Alexei N. Yukna, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Division of Infectious Diseases Clinical Guidelines Program

Alexei N. Yukna, MS, is an enterprise system architect and web application developer with more than 25 years of experience, including 20 years consulting with the Johns Hopkins Clinical Guidelines Program to develop, refine, and continually expand its publishing capacity through innovative use of WordPress. As lead developer of the program's XML redesign, he created a system for seamless cross-platform information exchange with the NCBI Bookshelf. Leveraging WordPress, PHP, JavaScript, XML, and similar technologies, he crafts user-centric solutions to address complex challenges in information dissemination and accessibility.