| Highlights | If you are planning to join us over the web this Wednesday 4pm (Mountain time) for the science-policy panel discussion (announced last month), you willl need the password "bessig1234". For more details, see below. Previously, we announced that there was a technical constraint of 24 simultaneous participants for the webinar: this limit has now been lifted, so please join us if you can.
If you are planning to join us via the web next Wednesday for the Fifth Annual NEON Inc Membership Meeting in Washington DC either in person or over the web, please register. Instructions on how to join the webinar will be sent to registrants later this week. |
| Construction Update |
NEON has completed civil construction at Ordway-Swisher Biological Station, the core site for Domain 3. Civil infrastructure is currently in various stages of construction across Domains 1, 3, 9, and 10.
The sensor deployment at Ordway-Swisher is currently planned for Summer 2013. Partial installation of sensors in Domain 10 is completed. To find out more about the steps involved in the construction of a site and what else is happening, see the website. |
| NEON Internship Program |
Designed to provide enthusiastic undergraduates with real-world experience in their field, the NEON Internship Program is a summer work experience at our headquarters in Boulder, CO.
The 2013 Summer Internship application period will open mid-November 2012, and applications are due February 1, 2013. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of NEON, we are looking for students from a variety of disciplines (e.g., Engineering, Science, Computing) as well as those with an interest in communicating about environmental issues.
The program is open to undergraduate students (i.e., rising sophomore, junior or senior) enrolled in a degree program leading to a baccalaureate. See the website for the list of internship project topics and the benefits offered. |
| Big Data in Ecology |
The last of a three-part series on Big Data in Ecology has been released on the NEON website. Part 1 describes the challenges of ecological data, and how the complexity of such data makes data integration and data fusion daunting. Part 2 outlines the benefits of successfully tackling these challenges, and describes initiatives launched by NSF and other agencies to deal with the data deluge. Part 3 describes some of the cultural challenges posed by Big Data, and how this affects the next generation of scientists.
The ultimate goal of this series is to spur exploration and discussion of what Big Data means, technically and culturally, to the people who study the interactions between living things and their environment. We're looking for your best stories, essays and images related to Big Data in ecology and environmental science. Read further on how to participate.
In a related development, the NSF DataWay initiative announced last June is designed to deal with the exploding amounts of heterogeneous data, including the types of complex data highlighted in Part 1 of the Big Data in Ecology series. Similar to the NSF EarthCube initiative but involving a wider community across disciplines and across different NSF Directorates (including the Directorate for Biological Sciences), the DataWay initiative will organize a charette in late February 2013 to assess the needs of the community. |
| Science-Policy Panel Webinar |
The Boulder Earth and Space Sciences Informatics Group (BESSIG) and NEON are co-organizing a panel discussion on 2012-10-10 (Wednesday) titled "Informing Science Policy: the role for Scientists and Engineers" at the NEON HQ in Boulder, CO.
BESSIG comprises a group of Earth and space science data users, data providers, data managers, and middleware providers whose goal is to improve the usage and thus the value of scientific data to improve the understanding of Earth and its systems.
Panelists include Alice Madden (Wirth Chair in Sustainable Development, School of Public Affairs, University of Colorado), Andy Schultheiss (District Director at Office of Congressman Jared Polis), Dan Baker (Director Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics), and Peter Backlund (National Center for Atmospheric Research [NCAR] Director of External Relations). The panel will be livecasted via the web.
Date: 2012-10-10 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00pm - 5:15pm (Mountain Time) (Please note the time zone)
Venue: NEON HQ, Boulder CO
Webinar link: http://goo.gl/jJV3n
Password: bessig1234 |
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. - Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases (EEID)
- Excerpt: The Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program supports research on the ecological, evolutionary, and socio-ecological principles and processes that influence the transmission dynamics of infectious diseases. The central theme of submitted projects must be quantitative or computational understanding of pathogen transmission dynamics. The intent is discovery of principles of infectious disease transmission and on testing mathematical or computational models that elucidate infectious disease systems.
- Critical Dates: December 05, 2012
- Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)
- Excerpt: The NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) provides Fellowships to individuals selected early in their graduate careers based on their demonstrated potential for significant achievements in science and engineering. Three years of support is provided by the program for graduate study that is in a field within NSF's mission and leads to a research-based master's or doctoral degree.
- Critical Dates: See NSF website.
- NSF Science, Engineering and Education for Sustainability Fellows (NSF SEES Fellows)
- Excerpt: Through the SEES Fellows Program, NSF seeks to advance science, engineering, and education to inform the societal actions needed for environmental and economic sustainability and human well-being while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges. The Program's emphasis is to facilitate investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and address issues of sustainability through a systems approach, building bridges between academic inquiry, economic growth, and societal needs.
- Critical Dates: See NSF website.
- Critical Zone Observatories
- Excerpt: NSF seeks proposals to establish a networked set of Critical Zone Observatories (CZOs) that will address pressing interdisciplinary scientific questions concerning geological, physical, chemical, and biological processes and their couplings that govern critical zone system dynamics. An overarching goal of the critical zone observatory network, which will be comprised of US-based sites (50 states plus territories), is to offer scalable and transferable information that could enhance the scale and scope of the knowledge building and societal benefits that will accrue beyond where the specific CZOs are located.
- Critical Dates: February 05, 2013
- Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC)
- Excerpt: This program seeks to enhance and expand the national resource of digital data documenting existing vouchered biological and paleontological collections and to advance scientific knowledge by improving access to digitized information (including images) residing in vouchered scientific collections across the United States.
- Critical Dates: October 19, 2012
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Key Dates in 2012
| 10/17 - 10/18: NEON, Inc. Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
10/18 - 10/19: AERC Annual Meeting (Washington, DC)
12/6 - 12/10: AGU Annual Meeting (San Francisco, CA) |
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