Cyberinfrastructure and the Dimensions in Biodiversity - Planning for Success -Madison, WI - Oct 13-15, 2010

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Wisconsin is awarded a grant for a workshop entitled "Cyberinfrastructure and the Dimensions in Biodiversity - Planning for Success," that will gather community input to define a vision, technical requirements, procedures, and approaches for the development of cyberinfrastructure (CI) supporting integrative research in biodiversity sciences. The workshop will convene an interdisciplinary group of scientists with CI expertise representing biology (including genetics, genomics and metagenomics, taxonomy and systematics, ecology), earth sciences, informatics, computer science, along with government agency and non-governmental organization representatives. The focus will be on identifying the requirements for software, middleware (as well as underlying standards and frameworks), computational capability, and other CI that will be needed or leveraged to support data-intensive research in an interoperable and integrated information environment. The outcomes of the workshop are intended to provide a set of community derived recommendations and lead to development of further strategy with an ultimate goal of providing improved support, usability, and sustainability of CI resources in biodiversity research community; one that is nimble, adaptable, and responsive to inevitable changes in the research and IT landscapes. The issues to be covered in this workshop address a broad cross-section of research in biological diversity. The discussion of CI in this context also has potential applicability to other data intensive science. Ultimately, the use of biodiversity information made available through an interoperable and integrated information infrastructure is likely to achieve broader applicability, use, and re-use.