CellML Specification Custodians
The CellML specification governing body transitioned from an Elected Editorial Board to a Self-Sustaining Custodian Board on 16 May 2026. The way the governance of the CellML Specification custodians works can be found here.
The current custodians are:
Hugh Sorby
Hugh Sorby (h.sorby@auckland.ac.nz) is a senior software development specialist at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute. Hugh currently leads the development of the libCellML project.
Michael Pan
Michael Pan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. His work seeks to develop energy-based mathematical models for applications in systems and synthetic biology. In particular, he uses bond graphs to systematically enforce physical conservation laws in modelling biology. Current research interests include developing new methodologies for constructing large-scale dynamic models of biochemical pathways, understanding the role energy in heart physiology, and rationally designing enzymatic pathways for biosensing applications.
Alan Garny
Alan Garny is the project manager and lead developer of [lib]OpenCOR, a CellML-based modelling environment that relies on COMBINE standards (including CellML). He is also involved in the development of libCellML, a library for CellML-based applications, and he is interested in cardiac electrophysiological modelling.
Michael Clerx
Michael Clerx is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham, where he uses a combination of computational modelling and novel experiments to study the mechanisms underlying the healthy and
pathological functioning of cardiac muscle cells. He is the main developer of the simulation tool Myokit, and is (or has been) involved with several CellML-related projects, including the Cardiac Electrophysiology Web Lab and finalising the CellML 2.0 specification.
David Nickerson
David Nickerson is an Associate Professor at the Auckland Bioengineering Institute at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. David's research interests are general reproducibility of computational models as well as cardiac and renal physiological modelling. David also helps lead the Physiome Model Repository, the Physiome journal, and the development of libCellML.
