Drs. Sara Graves and Rahul Ramachandran represented GHRC at the second plenary meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA), held September 16-18 at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC. RDA provides the framework to accelerate international data-driven innovation and discovery by facilitating research data sharing and exchange, use and re-use, standards harmonization, and discoverability, through the development and adoption of infrastructure, policy and practice. Dr. Graves was an invited presenter in the Plenary session titled “Building Global Partnerships: the perspective of affiliate organizations” in her role as the Secretary General of CODATA. Dr. Ramachandran led the Big Data Analytics Interest Group sessions as a co-chair. The Big Data Analytics (BDA) Interest Group seeks to develop community based recommendations on feasible data analytics approaches to address scientific community needs related to utilizing large quantities of data.