General Note About Update Format
|
A new toolbar "NEON Infomational Toolbox" has been added to the right-hand sidebar that will appear in all future issues. It provides links to useful material (e.g. "NEON Strategy" document, brochure, overview video) that members often request. The "Quick Links" toolbar has been retired.
"Opportunities" (workshops, courses, and other events aligned with the NEON mandate) are highlighted with a different background color. "Opportunities" are distinct from "Solicitations", which will always be found at the bottom of the email update.
|
New Board Member Bernard David
|
We are pleased
to announce that Bernard David has accepted an invitation from the NEON,
Inc. Board of Directors to join the Board as an At-Large Director.
A
successful technology entrepreneur, Bernard has founded, built and and
sold several businesses. Amongst these companies, he co-founded
SaveSmart, Inc. (Prio, Inc.) which was sold to Infospace and founded
officesupplies.com which was sold to Office Depot. Recently, he's been a
private investor, aligning his interests in sustainability with his
investment approach. For Bernard's full biography, click here.
Recall that the full complement of the NEON, Inc.
Board comprises of Directors who
are chosen by the Board itself (At-Large Group), and Directors chosen by
our member institutions (Member Group).
|
NEON Overview Video Now Available
|
We are very excited to release a professionally produced 7 minute video about how input from the community, partners, and stakeholders helped transform the NEON design into a research and discovery platform for addressing the nation's large-scale environmental challenges. The video includes a rendered fly-through of a typical NEON site and highlights how NEON data may be used for science, education, and decision support. The video is an excellent resource for those of you who are asked to provide an overview of NEON, and we encourage you to share this widely. It can be viewed through NEON, Inc.'s corporate YouTube account here.
|
OPPORTUNITY: NCAR-NEON Postdoctoral Fellowship Combining
Ecological, Carbon Cycle, Water Cycle, and Climate Sciences
|
A new two-year postdoctoral training fellowship will commence in 2010,
in partnership between the National Center for Atmospheric Research
(NCAR) and NEON. Developing a fuller understanding of the interactions
of climate change
with terrestrial ecosystems and the carbon and water cycles is a grand
challenge in environmental and Earth system science. Such interactions
will be an important factor in determining the evolution of ecosystems
and the services they provide to human societies, the rate and magnitude
of climate change, and the severity of climate change impacts during
the next century. Fellows will acquire specific training in atmospheric
and climate
research following NCAR's established postdoctoral training program, as
well as training in ecosystem modeling and observations at NEON. Click here for
details.
|
OPPORTUNITY: iPlant Collaborative Computational Biology for Biology Educators
|
This workshop will introduce college faculty to various resources that can be used to prepare students to solve problems in the biological sciences computationally. Progress in the life sciences, including plant science, is becoming more dependent on computational modeling, analysis and visualization. Faculty will gain experience in dynamic simulation of photosynthesis, ecophysiological modeling of plant flowering time, probabilistic models of molecular evolution, and phylogenetic tree reconstruction. These and other examples are presented to enable educators to prepare their students to effectively use computational analytical tools, and to understand, use and create models as components of the contemporary scientific method. Click here for more information.
|
Ohio Wesleyan University EREN to focus
on regional to continental-scale ecological issues
|
NSF has awarded Ohio Wesleyan University a $494,980 grant to establish
Ecological Research as Education Network (EREN). The EREN will develop
collaborative research projects focused on
regional to continental-scale ecological issues, engage students in
authentic science while teaching them basic ecology, create a
continental-scale ecology course module using research data that will be
team-taught by scientist-educators from the participating institutions,
and establish an online database of collaborative data sets collected
during the project. The EREN also will encourage scientists at PUIs to
participate in existing research networks, such as NEON. Click here
for details.
|
NEON in Science "News Focus"
| | NEON was featured in a News Focus article by Elizabeth Pennisi in Science titled "A Groundbreaking Observatory to Monitor the Environment" (23 April 2010: 418-420). The article can be accessed here (valid Science subscription required). A podcast of an interview of Elizabeth by Robert Frederick is accessible here (no subscription required).
|
REMINDER: Member's Meeting Moved from 9/22/10 (Wednesday) to 9/24/10 (Friday)
|
As stated in the Flash Update on 5/6/10, please remember that the meeting has been changed from Wednesday to Friday 9/24/10. The venue is the
USGS HQ in Reston, VA, not far from Dulles International Airport.
There
will be a reception on the evening of 9/23/10 (Thursday) for attendees
to meet NEON, Inc. Board members and NEON, Inc. employees. The meeting
on Friday is expected to start at no later than 8:30am and end no later
than 3pm. More details are forthcoming.
|
Final Design Review Presentation Materials Available
| |
Presentations made at the NSF Final Design Review of NEON held in late November
2009 are now available. The presentations are part of the material presented to NSF reviewers as part of the mandated NSF review process. They represent the work of the entire NEON team spanning science, education, engineering, project management, and business systems. Click here to access the files.
|
Solicitations
|
(Please click the respective links to check the original source of information. The abbreviated text below may not reflect amendments to the original announcements, and may not reflect the original intent of the solicitation.)
 Advances in Biological Informatics- Excerpt: The Advances in Biological Informatics (ABI) program seeks to encourage new approaches to the analysis and dissemination of biological knowledge for the benefit of both the scientific community and the broader public. The ABI program is especially interested in the development of informatics tools and resources that have the potential to advance, or transform, research in biology supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation.
- Critical dates: August 23, 2010
- Research Coordination Networks (RCN)
- Excerpt: The goal of this program is to advance a field or create new directions in research or education. Innovative ideas for implementing novel networking strategies are especially encouraged. Groups of investigators will be supported to communicate and coordinate their research, training and educational activities across disciplinary, organizational, geographic and international boundaries.
- Critical dates: See NSF website.
- Informal Science Education (ISE)
- Excerpt: The ISE program supports innovation in anywhere, anytime, lifelong learning, through investments in research, development, infrastructure, and capacity-building for STEM learning outside formal school settings.
- Critical dates: Preliminary proposals due July 22, 2010. Full proposals due: December 7, 2010.
- Decadal and Regional Climate Prediction using Earth System Models (EaSM)
- Excerpt: This activity calls for the development of
next-generation Earth System Models that include coupled and interactive
representations of ecosystems, agricultural working lands and forests,
urban environments, biogeochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, ocean and
atmospheric currents, the water cycle, land ice, and human activities. Competitive projects should address key problems critical
to linking relevant Earth system processes over a variety of spatial and
temporal scales and to advancing the theoretical foundations for the
modeling and simulation of existing data and data collected by the new
and envisioned NSF environmental observatories. Proposals are encouraged
that have the potential to dramatically improve our predictive
capabilities as well as our understanding of how small and large scale
processes lead to non-linearities and activation thresholds.
- Critical dates: Full proposal due June 25, 2010.
- Macrosystems Biology
- Excerpt: NSF invites proposals from interdisciplinary
teams of scientists to conduct innovative, integrated, systems-oriented
"macrosystems biology" research to detect, understand and forecast the
consequences of climate and land use change and invasive species on the
biosphere at regional to continental scales. Proposals should address
the scales where the ecological research challenges are the greatest and
where research has the greatest potential to transform the field of
ecology by addressing scaling issues that have long hindered development
of large-scale ecology. Projects should strive to provide a mechanistic understanding of how
multiple scale dynamics contribute to the structure, functioning, and
change of the biosphere, and lead to the development of a more
predictive understanding of ecological change. Proposals should be well
grounded in theory, include novel approaches that will result in a
theoretical framework for a predictive understanding of macroscale
biology, and shows great promise for enhancing basic theoretical
understandings.
- Critical dates: Full proposal due September 16, 2010.
|
|
Key Dates in 2010
|
08/01-06: ESA Annual Meeting (Pittsburgh, PA)
09/22-23: NEON, Inc.
Board of Directors Meeting (Reston, VA)
09/24: NEON, Inc. Annual Member's Meeting (Reston, VA)
09/22-26: OBFS Annual Meeting (U. Mich. Biological Station)
10/14-15: AERC Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
|
|
