iPlant 2010 Conference

MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas, Nevada
May 23-26, 2010

DNA Subway Training: 8 AM - Noon, MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas, May 26, 2010

The NSF-sponsored iPlant Collaborative is entering the third year of funding and is holding this conference to describe the cyberinfrastructure (CI) development efforts to date, to describe what is planned with the current Grand Challenge Teams (Tree of Life and Genotype to Phenotype), and to explore opportunities in CI development to support other disciplines in plant science.  Both presentations and breakout group discussions are planned.

In addition to describing the current iPlant CI efforts, David Salt from Purdue University is leading a small group of independent faculty as the
Scientific Opportunities Team who have been asked by the iPlant project  to identify areas of Plant Science in which progress would be facilitated by the development of a cyberinfrastructure.  They have identified that the long-term objective of the CI developed by iPlant would be to allow plant scientists to work across scales from “DNA to the Globe”.

Currently iPlant is working on cyber infrastructures to facilitate the Genotype to Phenotype discovery process and phylogenetic inference facilitated by a plant Tree of Life. David Salt’s group has identified four key areas that bridge these scales and are consistent with the current CI being developed by iPlant. These areas are Physiology, Adaptation, Inter-species Interactions and Global Diversity. They further identified Tree Biology and Plant Nutrition as fields that are currently at a maturity level that will allow scaling across DNA to the Globe. 

David Salt’s group has been involved in planning  portions of the agenda for the iPlant 2010 Conference. The afternoon of Day 1 is dedicated to laying out the world class science that is being done in each of these identified areas. A portion of Day 2 is dedicated to six working group meeting aimed at developing in each area a draft of the cyber infrastructure needs, building a leadership team and identifying a prototype cyber infrastructure component that could be used to act as a “seed” planning project supported by iPlant. This seed project would then be used going forward to grow the cyberinfrastructure and the support needed to develop it.

Training in the use of DNA Subway will be provided on Day 3; spaces are limited so please be sure to check that you will be attending when you register.  Click here for more information on DNA Subway.

Please contact us for more information.