| Sixth Annual Membership Meeting | |
The sixth annual membership meeting will be held in Gainesville, FL on 2013-10-01 and 2013-10-02. The detailed agenda is still under development, but please email Brian Wee with suggestions on agenda items. Tuesday (2013-10-01) has been designated for an all-day meeting. Wednesday (2013-10-02) will include a morning visit to the NEON core site at the Ordway-Swisher Biological Station and workshops in the afternoon. A YouTube overview of the Biological Station that includes a segment about NEON was released earlier this year. |
| New Board Directors |
NEON, Inc. would like to welcome two new At-Large Directors to its Board of Directors: Mark Abbot (Dean and Professor at the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University) and Tom Berger (Executive Vice President of the National Children's Museum).
The NEON, Inc. bylaws stipulate that the Board comprise two groups of Directors: At-Large and Membership. The latter group of Directors are elected by NEON, Inc.'s institutional member representatives, while the former group are elected by the Directors then in-office. |
| Developments in Open Data and Information |
On 2013-05-09, President Obama signed an Executive Order directing OMB to develop and issue an Open Data Policy for all Federal agencies. It requires that the "default state" of Government information resources shall be open and machine readable. Furthermore, those resources must be managed as a national asset, and data must be easy to find, access, and use. In tandem with the release of the Executive Order, the US CTO and CIO announced "Project Open Data" to accelerate collaborations related to the Open Data Policy.
In a separate development, NSF Assistant Director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) Dr. Farnam Jahanian testified before Congress on "Next Generation Computing and Big Data Analytics". In his testimony, Dr. Jahanian included the example of NEON "making all its data freely available". The testimony also states that "Other Federal Agencies.... and international groups.... are emulating the standards established by NEON, Inc."
The Corporation is actively exploring ways to foster interoperability with observation assets both within and outside the United States. Within the US, the motivation for integration is consistent with the White House's "National Strategy for Civil Earth Observations " highlighted in an earlier update. This also harks to opportunities for closer coordination between NEON and LTER, CZO, and Field Stations and Marine Labs (FSML: see the earlier issue that highlights the FSML Strategic Vision Report). On the international front, we highlight ongoing interactions with Australia and the European Union below. |
| NEON, Inc. Signs an MOU with Australia's Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) |
The Australian Terrestrial Ecosystem Research Network (TERN) is supported by the Australian Government to provide a distributed infrastructure for collection, storage and sharing of ecosystem data, spanning biogeophysical properties and processes, along with short and long term monitoring of the biota. TERN's primary objective is to provide the network and resources to enable sustained, long-term collection, storage and sharing of ecosystem data to meet terrestrial ecosystem science and management needs in Australia.
In February 2013, Dave Tazik, Andrea Thorpe, and Steve Berukoff attended the TERN 2013 symposium in Canberra, Australia. The launch of the symposium was marked by an announcement of a formal working agreement between TERN and NEON. The Memorandum of Understanding between TERN and NEON includes potential cooperative activities such as: requirements driven design, in-situ measurements and sampling protocols, data products, informatics, science and education management, and project management.
An earlier story on our website titled "Bridging the Data Divide Down Under" provides further background information. |
| EU's ICOS Head Office Visits Boulder |
In late April 2013, NEON, Inc. hosted the European Union's Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS) head-office for a two-day visit to the NEON facility in Boulder. ICOS will provide across Europe and adjacent regions a distributed infrastructure for standardized long-term high precision monitoring of atmospheric and oceanic greenhouse gas concentrations, ecosystem fluxes and essential carbon cycling variables.
ICOS and NEON have shared responsibilities in providing the necessary breadth of observations necessary to define the current state of the ecosystem. This requires a diverse and integrated set of observations to measure variables and processes necessary to characterize long-term climate trends and their impacts. These common goals provide the motivation for collaboration in areas such as in-situ measurements, data products, scientific program management, project management, data interoperability, and others.
NEON's Hank Loescher, who has worked closely with ICOS over the past few years, invited the ICOS Head Office staff based in Finland to visit our Boulder facility. ICOS, like NEON, is now executing its implementation plan and actively engaged in building partnerships. The visit was followed up later by a webinar that Brian Wee provided to a group of Finnish researchers and research administrators on informatics and its role in enabling the transformation of environmental data for research and policy. |
| Opportunity: ACCO Post-Graduate Climate Fellowship Program |
The Future Climate Change Officer Fellowship Program (Future CCOs) is designed to connect masters level graduates who have focused their studies upon climate change or sustainability (and have formal education in business, law, engineering, public policy and/or communications) with companies, universities and government entities to work on climate change related response efforts (e.g. supply chain management, GHG management, adaptation and resilience, disclosure and investor relations, etc.).
The program will link employers seeking talented climate change practitioners with graduates from an elite group of universities with recognized programs focused upon climate change, sustainability, natural resource management, environmental management and other related subject matter. Centered around this professional talent pool, the program will ultimately establish a professional track for graduates pursuing opportunities in the profession of climate change leadership. |
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.  Instrument Development for Biological Research (IDBR) - Excerpt: Advances in the biological sciences are increasingly dependent upon the development of novel instrumentation for collection of new data. The Instrument Development for Biological Research (IDBR) Program supports the development, production, and distribution of novel instrumentation that addresses demonstrated needs in biological research in areas supported by NSF Biology programs (see http://www.nsf.gov/bio).
- Critical Dates: 2013-07-31
- Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR)
- Excerpt: Biological research collections, including living stock/culture collections and non-living vouchered natural history collections, support many essential research activities in the Biological Sciences. Collections are used to document biodiversity, identify species, recognize climatic shifts, explore alternate energy sources, and improve agricultural, biomedical, and manufacturing applications. The Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) Program provides funds: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained, accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection ownership responsibilities.
- Critical Dates: 2013-07-16
- EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track-1: (RII Track-1)
- Excerpt: Research Infrastructure Improvement Track-1: (RII Track-1) awards provide up to $4 million per year for up to 5 years to support physical, human, and cyber infrastructure improvements in research areas selected by the jurisdiction's EPSCoR steering committee as having the best potential to improve future R&D competitiveness of the jurisdiction.
- Critical Dates: 2013-08-06
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Key Dates in 2013
| May 30 - May 31: NEON, Inc. Board Meeting
Jun 4 - Jun 7: ESA Scaling UP Workshops
Aug 4 - Aug 9: ESA Annual Meeting
Oct 1 - 2: NEON, Inc. Sixth NEON, Inc. Membership Meeting
Dec 9 - Dec 13: AGU Fall Meeting |
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