Sydney, Australia

Aidan Wilson

Research strategist, technologist, educator and developer

About

I help Australian research communities get more out of research technology: the systems that capture research data, the identity and trust that connect them, and the skills that let researchers use them well.

I started out as a researcher in linguistics, documenting endangered Australian languages, and spent eight years looking after digital archives at PARADISEC. That work taught me what researchers actually need from their data and tools, and it still shapes how I build things.

For more than a decade I have worked at Intersect Australia, first as a Digital Research Analyst embedded in universities and now as Digital Research Services Manager, leading a team that supports eight member universities. I still write code, and I like leading people who want to do the same kind of work well.

What I work on

Research data capture

REDCap administration, external modules and hosting that stays secure, current and easy for users.

Identity and trust

Authentication and authorisation between research platforms, using OIDC, AAF, CILogon and ORCID.

Infrastructure and DevOps

Containers, Ansible and infrastructure-as-code, with a focus on security and governance.

Training at scale

A national research skills program that reaches more than 5,000 attendees a year across many fields.

Selected work

  • Intersect's research skills training platform I designed and built most of the technical infrastructure behind it and run it with DevOps practices, so it can keep growing without breaking.
  • REDCap external modules Fifteen modules used by institutions around the world, plus contributions to REDCap's core code.
  • Safer REDCap upgrades Ansible-based deployments and upgrades with little or no downtime, and automated YARA rules, built in response to the serious vulnerabilities found since 2023.
  • Authentication and trust flows Integrations between OIDC and AAF and services such as REDCap and ORCID, and work with national organisations on how orchestration platforms, XNAT and REDCap trust each other.
  • Containerised research infrastructure A simulated Slurm high-performance computing cluster in Docker, and REDCap running under rootless Podman with secrets kept in a vault.
  • Open Badge 3 credentials Credential minting and passport systems built on open-source parts, including Python Flask, OIDC and cryptographic signing.

Career

  1. Dec 2023 – present
    Digital Research Services ManagerIntersect Australia
  2. 2015 – 2023
    Digital Research AnalystIntersect Australia, embedded at Macquarie University, Western Sydney University and Australian Catholic University
  3. 2006 – 2014
    Archive systems and depositor liaisonPARADISEC
  4. 2005 – 2009
    Lecturer and tutor in linguisticsThe University of Sydney

Tools I use

  • REDCap
  • Python
  • Flask
  • Ansible
  • Docker
  • Podman
  • Slurm
  • AAF
  • ORCID
  • Moodle
  • R
  • bash
  • JavaScript
  • PHP
  • SQL

Recognition and writing

REDCap Consortium Most Valuable Player, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, 2022. Awarded for code contributions, external module development, feature suggestions, and support for administrators and users.

Traditional Tiwi documentation, AIATSIS grant, 2011–2013. A project documenting the critically endangered Traditional Tiwi language of northern Australia.

Code-switching or code-mixing? Wilson, Wigglesworth & Hurst, in Language Practices of Indigenous Children and Youth, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60120-9_6

Traditional Tiwi field recordings, dataset, PARADISEC, 2012. doi.org/10.4225/72/56E97956B1EC9