I wrote an obituary for Nicki Douglas for this year's book on the 
research activities of the SEURAT-1 research cluster whose goal is the 
replacement of animal experiments with superior scientific methods. 
Nicki and I both worked on contributing significantly to this project as 
it got off the ground in 2011. Due to the scientific context this 
version of an obituary for her was a more work-oriented one than I or 
she might have written for herself :)!

The obituary is located on the last inside page of the book. You can 
download an electronic copy (high resolution version recommended, see 
page 374) from the following link:

http://www.seurat-1.eu/pages/library/seurat-1-annual-report.php

I enclose a copy of the text below here.

The book also contains a chapter on ToxBank whose ICT infrastructure is 
being built upon OpenTox and extensions to it to support omics, assay 
protocols, and bioinformatics.

We are planning to have both European and US OpenTox meetings for the 
community during 2013.

I will be happy to hear about your news and developments, potential to 
collaborate on new proposals and projects building on OpenTox, and hope 
you have an enjoyable holidays and successful 2013!

best regards
Barry

Nicola Diane Douglas (1952-2012)

Nicola Diane Douglas, known to her family, friends and co-workers as 
Nicki, was born 27 March 1952 in Barton-on-sea in the UK, the daughter 
of Charles and Diana Hasemer. She died suddenly and unexpectedly in her 
home in Zeiningen, Switzerland on 6 February 2012. Due to her father’s 
work as an airline pilot, she travelled extensively in her youth. She 
maintained an interest in travel and global issues throughout her life, 
particularly in the area of animal protection and wildlife conservation. 
This interest was put into action through initiation and support of 
research in the development of alternatives to replace animal testing, 
involvement in activities in Switzerland on animal protection, and 
participation in wildlife conservation work in Africa.

Her early professional life involved photography, journalism, and 
teaching English as a foreign language, after which she settled down 
into marketing and communications, following her move to Switzerland in 
1975. As part of the country management team in Switzerland for Autodesk 
(creators of AutoCAD), she was responsible for all marketing activities 
in multiple languages throughout Europe and the Middle East and worked 
closely with the company’s virtual corporation of third-party developers.

Nicki Douglas and Barry Hardy met in August 1999 and lived and worked 
closely together as partners in Switzerland from September 2001 until 
her death in 2012.

In 2003 she founded Douglas Connect (DC) as a Swiss SME which 
specialised in creating and facilitating research communities and 
networks, collaborative projects and knowledge management. DC created 
and directed the program activities of the InnovationWell and eCheminfo 
communities of practice with goals and activities aimed at improving 
human health and safety and developing new solutions for neglected 
diseases. DC served as Coordinator of the FP7-supported OpenTox project 
(www.opentox.org) which developed an Open Source Predictive Toxicology 
Framework for the management of toxicology data, models and validation. 
Within SEURAT-1, DC is the current scientific coordinator of the ToxBank 
infrastructure development project for supporting predictive toxicology 
and risk assessment (www.toxbank.net). DC is also leading research 
activities in antimalarial drug design and toxicology for the Scientists 
Against Malaria project (www.scientistsagainstmalaria.net) which was 
developed from a pilot within the SYNERGY FP7 ICT project on 
knowledge-oriented collaboration. In addition to managing the business, 
Nicki participated hands-on in communications with many scientists 
involved in the communities and collaborations, and organized numerous 
meeting and workshop activities, whose success was due to her attention 
to detail and the social interaction cultivated.

In recent years Nicki and Barry have been active in wildlife 
conservation work in southern Africa including work in Namibia and South 
Africa with goals to sustain and support wilderness areas and their 
populations of wildlife. They have been involved in work aimed to 
develop a new park in Namibia, and participated in lion capture, leopard 
tracking and African wild dog monitoring. Nicki in particular had a 
special affection and communication with cats, both domestic and wild. 
It is planned to establish a foundation in Switzerland which will 
continue to support similar research and conservation activities in the 
future.

Reference: http://www.seurat-1.eu/pages/library/seurat-1-annual-report.php

Barry Hardy PhD
Director
Douglas Connect GmbH
Baermeggenweg 14
4314 Zeiningen
Switzerland