Robert Forkel
Head Of Research Data Management
Leipzig, Saxony, Germany
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRobert Forkel is a Head of Research Data Management with 13 years of software and research-programming experience, currently running deployment and operations for over 50 scientific online databases at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. He combines deep technical chops in Python back-end development and data tooling with a passion for Open Data practices, having contributed bug fixes and Python 3 ports to the widely used dataset library for SQL data handling. Across multiple Max Planck institutes he has designed standards for research data, built web frameworks to publish scientific databases, and migrated legacy systems to modern platforms. Grounded in a mathematics background, he focuses on clean, maintainable code that advances reproducible research and often works at the intersection of infrastructure, data serialization, and long-term research stewardship.
13 years of coding experience
22 years of employment as a software developer
Mathematics, Mathematics at Wesleyan UniversityMaster's Degree Mathematics, Master's Degree Mathematics at University of Regensburg
Github Skills (10)
databases10
sql10
python10
database10
datasets10
testing9
serialization9
data-serialization9
csv8
json8
Programming languages (17)
Github contributions (5)
pudo/dataset
Jul 2014 - Nov 2014
Easy-to-use data handling for SQL data stores with support for implicit table creation, bulk loading, and transactions.
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:7 commits in 3 months
Contributions summary:Robert primarily contributed to the `dataset` library, which focuses on data handling for SQL data stores. Their work involved porting code to Python 3.4, fixing issues identified by flake8, merging upstream changes, and making the `dataset.freeze.config` compatible with Python 3. The user's commits show a focus on extending test coverage and fixing bugs related to data serialization, specifically in the context of freezing and exporting data to various formats.
sqldatabasepython
tsammalex/pytsammalex
Jun 2020 - Oct 2025
Contributions:11 pushes, 1 branch, 1 tag in 5 years 5 months
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