The DORA team is delighted to invite you to this online event focused on innovations in research assessment practices in the United States, on November 20, 2025, 1:00 – 2:30 PM (Eastern Time). You can register at https://bit.ly/RRA-innovations.
Enrique will be talking about the work he has been doing when as Department Chair at Yale on anonymization during the tenure process and some early indicators of the impact of this approach. Anna will be taking us through the interconnected series of 5 activities that HHMI are leading linked to RRA, including anonymization of bibliographic information in their assessment processes and peer review training. And Caitlin will be explaining the exciting new funding scheme launched recently by ORCA designed to support and accelerate pilots and experiments in RRA in the US.
The session promises to showcase some impressive exemplars of concrete actions being taken by leading organisations in the US. We hope this will inspire you to try new RRA actions in your organisation, or to accelerate existing ones, combined with a route to some funding to support your efforts. We hope you will join us and contribute to the discussion!
Learn more about our great speakers
Enrique M. De La Cruz
Enrique M. De La Cruz, PhD, is the William R. Kenan Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and the Head of Branford College at Yale University. He is a first-generation Cuban-American who was raised in Newark, NJ. Dr. De La Cruz received his undergraduate degree in Biology with a minor in Chemistry from Rutgers University, Newark College of Arts and Sciences, where he was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and Beta Beta BetaHonor Societies. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Biochemistry, Cell & Molecular Biology (BCMB) at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and received postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. He joined the MB&B faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2001 and chaired the Department from 2000-2003. He was a Visiting Scientist at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Commissariat a l’Energie Atomique (CEA) & Universite Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France, a Mayent-Rothschild Senior Researcher Fellow at the Institut Curie, Paris, and an Invited Professor Fellow at ESPCI Paris Tech (ecole superieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la ville de Paris). In 2020, he was honored as Cell Press’ 100 inspiring Hispanic/Latinx scientists in America, in 2021 named an Inaugural Fellow of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB) and a member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering (CASE), and in 2022 a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Dr. De La Cruz’s research focuses on the actin cytoskeleton, molecular motor proteins, and nucleotide signaling enzymes. Dr. De La Cruz is actively involved with various scientific societies, journals, and peer review committees, and actively participates in outreach activities focused on enhancing minority participation, career development and retention in the sciences.
Anna Hatch
Anna Hatch, PhD, is a Program Officer for Scientific Strategy at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In this role, she leads initiatives to improve research integrity and accelerate discovery through innovations in academic publishing and researcher assessment. In the past year, she has led the development of a peer review training program at HHMI, called Transparent and Accountable Peer Review, where graduate students and postdocs learn to write constructive, collegial public peer review reports on preprints. She previously served as the Program Director for the Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA), where she worked with the academic community to advance practical and robust approaches to researcher assessment, including the use of structured narratives. DORA engages the community to raise awareness of new tools and processes, facilitate the implementation of good practices, and catalyze change. Before working with DORA, Anna was a science policy fellow at Research!America, a nonprofit advocacy alliance to increase public and policymaker awareness of the benefits of medical research. She received her PhD in Biochemistry from Dartmouth College where her research focused on mitochondrial dynamics. In 2021, Anna was awarded the Rada Distinguished Alumni Award from the from the University of Wisconsin—LaCrosse recognizing her contributions to improving research culture.
Caitlin Schleicher
Caitlin Schleicher, PhD, is the Director of Community & Partnerships at the Open Research Community Accelerator (ORCA). She previously served as Director of the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS Open), where she led strategic planning and operational execution for over 100 college and university campuses working together to align open scholarship values and academic incentives. She has held positions at Johns Hopkins University in the medical library and in the president’s office as a Scholarly Communication Informationist. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Master’s in Library and Information Science from the University of Maryland – College Park.