| Welcome | | We are pleased to welcome our latest member institution: Miami University (Oxford, OH) with Dr. Craig Williamson as the Member Institution Representative. |
| Developments @ NEON | There are three news items posted on the NEON website of interest to our community:
- NEON at AGU. If you are headed to the AGU meeting next week, come find us.
- NEON and LTER. An overview of how the two NSF Environmental Observatories are working together to advance ecological research.
- First NEON spectrometer completed. JPL has completed the first of NEON's three spectrometers, due for delivery to Boulder by mid-December.
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| Free Informatics-related Workshops at AGU |
Data Management for the Earth Scientist. This workshop will discuss the rationale for data management planning and the context of NSF's requirement for a 2 page data management plan to accompany every proposal; dealing with data during the course of your research; creating metadata for discovery, access, use and archiving, finding and working with a long term archive; as well as properly giving credit to other data producers. Tuesday, December 6 (1300h -1700h), San Francisco Marriott Marquis, Salons 10-12. Open to all AGU attendees. Free. Organized by the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners.
Visual Data Analysis: Tools and Techniques for the Geophysical Sciences. Scientific visualization has changed from one of merely a communication aid to an indispensable tool for discovery, used not exclusively by visualization experts but by scientists in their day-to-day efforts to analyze data and extract new insights. The goal of this workshop is to provide an overview of some of the open source software packages that are available, and most relevant, to researchers in the geo-sciences. Attendees can expect to gain a basic understanding of the capabilities of these powerful visual data analysis environments; learn which tools may be most appropriate for their own needs; and have an opportunity to talk with tool developers, on-hand for the workshop. Wednesday, December 7 (0830h - 1230h), Moscone South, Mezzanine Room 230. Open to all AGU attendees. Free.
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| Cyberinfrastructure in Support of Biological Sciences |
In a recent Dear Colleague letter, the NSF Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO) and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure called attention to a cross-foundation solicitation that provides a unique opportunity for members of the biological (and collaborating) sciences to become engaged in advancing an innovative and sustainable cyberinfrastructure in support of biological sciences. Called the Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) program, SI2 includes planning awards aimed at organizing an interdisciplinary community to examine and define their software requirements and challenges. NEON and LTER are examples of BIO investments that "could be leveraged to achieve new levels of technical capability to respond to grand challenge research questions".
The letter encourages members of the BIO research and informatics community to consider this opportunity, either by participating directly in the submission of conceptualization proposals, or by responding to invitations to participate in projects that may be funded through this program. |
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NSF Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Webcast
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The NSF Major Research Instrumentation Program (MRI) serves to increase access to shared scientific and engineering instruments for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education, museums, science centers, and not-for-profit organizations. At NEON, Inc.'s Fourth Annual meeting for its institutional members (2011-09-16) (Boulder, CO), we organized a breakout group to discuss compelling questions that can be answered at a regional scale if NEON measurements were augmented with additional measurements or infrastructure.
Attendees of that breakout session suggested, among other things, that a distributed network of tightly coordinated sites taking the same suite of measurements to address a regionally relevant scientific question may be thought of as a single instrument, akin to a fractal / recursive version of NEON. Design considerations would include the trade-off between number of sites and measurements per site, and also how best to complement the existing NSF Environmental Observatories like LTER sites, Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs), and biological field stations.
A webcast on the MRI program will be organized by NSF on 2011-12-06 from 1400 hrs - 1530 hrs (Eastern time). The webcast is intended for those who intend to submit a MRI proposal for the upcoming January deadline, but you might wish to tune in to learn about the parameters of the program. |
| Opportunity for Early Career Scientists |
DISCCRS (pronounced "discourse") is built on the premise that successful interdisciplinary scholarship begins with a core area of expertise and grows with the development of broader knowledge and through a network of collegial connections across disciplines. DISCCRS organizes an annual symposium for selected early career scientists interested in working across traditional disciplinary boundaries. The goal is to develop international, interdisciplinary collegial networks among scholars likely to become leaders in their chosen fields. Participation at the symposia is limited to 30 early career scholars identified by an interdisciplinary committee of research scientists based on review of submitted applications. The next symposium is in 2012-10-13 through 2012-10-20 (Colorado Spring, CO). The deadline for applications is 2012-02-29.
NIMBioS also offers a number of opportunities for early career scientists, including postdoctoral fellows (deadlines on March 1, September 1, and December 11). |
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CREATIV: Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures
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CREATIV (Creative Research Awards for Transformative Interdisciplinary Ventures) is a new NSF pilot grant mechanism under the Integrated NSF Support Promoting Interdisciplinary Research and Education (INSPIRE) initiative, to support bold interdisciplinary projects in all NSF-supported areas of science, engineering, and education research. AAAS' ScienceInsider calls it "the latest attempt by the agency to demonstrate its openness to out-of-the-box ideas". Proposals are internally reviewed and may be up to $1M and for up to five years. However, researchers must first receive written approval from two intellectually distinct NSF divisions or programs. Once written approval is obtained, NSF will make a funding decision within two or three months. |
| Opportunities at SESYNC | |
As announced in the August 2011 membership update, NSF recently funded the new National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center (SESYNC) to be the nexus for research on such issues as water availability, sustainable food production, and the interaction between human activities and ecosystem health. SESYNC's founding partners include the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (a NEON, Inc. member institution). The synthesis center recently announced opportunities around workshops, courses, post-doctoral fellows, and a number of full staff positions which may be of interest to the NEON community. |
| Science and Policy |
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- As reported in the June 2011 membership update, NEON and LTER were referenced in a US Senate bill tasking the EPA with leading the task of setting up a national mercury monitor program. The US House of Representatives has introduced similar legislation, HR. 3391. Both bills are now being considered by respective Senate and House committees.
- AGU has just announced a new Science Policy Conference to be held in Washington, D.C. from 2012-04-30 through 2012-05-03. This meeting will focus on the science that helps inform policymakers' decisions related to natural hazards, natural resources, and the Arctic.
- The Ecological Society of America (a NEON, Inc. Founding Member Institution) invites applications for its 2012 Graduate Student Policy Award (GSPA). Offered each year, this award gives graduate students hands-on science policy experience including interacting with congressional decision-makers, federal agency officials, and others engaged in science and public policy.
- The American Institute of Biological Sciences (a NEON, Inc. Founding Member Institution) is now accepting applications for the 2012 AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award (EPPLA). This award recognizes graduate students in the biological sciences who have demonstrated initiative and leadership in science policy. EPPLA recipients receive first-hand experience at the interface of science and public policy.
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Solicitations of Potential Interest to the NEON Community
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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. The "New" icons indicate recent new announcements (includes announcements for regular solicitations), and not necessarily new programs. These are primarily, though not limited to, NSF solicitations. Not all new announcements are included in the list below. - Improvements in Facilities, Communications, and Equipment at Biological Field Stations and Marine Laboratories (FSML)
- Excerpt: Biological Field Stations and Marine Laboratories (FSMLs) are off-campus facilities for research and education pertaining to physical and biological phenomena and organisms in the natural habitats of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine ecosystems. In recognition of the continuing need for modern facilities and equipment at FSMLs, the NSF invites proposals that address the general goal of FSML improvement. Requests must fall exclusively into one of two classes: Improvement or Planning. Improvement proposals should focus on well-defined projects of major equipment acquisition, data management and communication systems modernization, or physical plant improvement. Planning proposals are for strategic institutional planning for the long term research and education goals of the station.
- Critical Dates: January 17, 2012; December 14, 2012
- Long Term Research in Environmental Biology (LTREB)
- Excerpt: Through the LTREB program, the Division of Environmental Biology (DEB) and the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) encourage the submission of proposals that generate extended time series of biological and environmental data to address ecological and evolutionary processes and resolve important issues in organismal and environmental biology. Researchers must have collected at least six years of previous data to qualify for funding, and these data must motivate the proposed research. The proposal also must present a cohesive conceptual rationale or framework for ten years of research. Questions or hypotheses outlined in this conceptual framework must guide an initial 5-year proposal as well as a subsequent, abbreviated renewal.
- Critical Dates: January 10, 2012
- Sustainability Research Networks Competition (SRN)
- Excerpt: The goal of the Sustainability Research Networks (SRN) competition is to support the development and coalescence of entities to advance collaborative research that addresses questions and challenges in sustainability science, engineering, and education. SRNs will link scientists, engineers, and educators, at existing institutions, centers, networks, and also develop new research efforts and collaborations. The Sustainability Research Networks competition outlined here is one part of the growing NSF investment in its Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability (SEES) portfolio (www.nsf.gov/sees/). Challenges associated with broadly based SEES goals will be met by supporting fundamental science and engineering research and education needed to understand and overcome the barriers to sustainable human well being and to forge reasoned pathways to a sustainable future.
- Critical Dates: Preliminary proposal due: December 01, 2011. Full proposal du: April 1, 2012.
- Geoinformatics (GI)
- Excerpt: The Division of Earth Sciences (EAR) will consider proposals for the development of cyberinfrastructure for the geosciences (Geoinformatics). EAR seeks the development and implementation of enabling information technology with impacts that extend beyond an individual investigator or small group of investigators and that facilitates the next generation of geosciences research. Proposals to this solicitation may seek support for community-driven development and implementation of databases; tools for data integration, interoperability, and visualization; software development and code hardening; and data-intensive/new computing methodologies that support the enhancement of geosciences research and education activities.
- Critical Dates: January 13, 2012
- Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis (OPUS)
- Excerpt: To encourage synthetic studies, the Population and Community Ecology, Ecosystem Science, Evolutionary Processes, and Systematic Biology and Biodiversity Inventories Clusters in the Division of Environmental Biology have established OPUS (Opportunities for Promoting Understanding through Synthesis). OPUS supports investigators to synthesize the body of their research. OPUS awards target investigators who have, over time, produced important papers from a series of related research projects, but have not yet integrated that series in a single synthesis. OPUS will fund single or multiple investigators to synthesize the body of work they themselves have generated. Funds requesting support for the production of new data or for synthesizing other investigators' research are not appropriate.
- Critical Dates: August 01, 2012
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