Identification Process

The Grand Challenge Identification Process

In its first year, the iPlant Collaborative reviewed requests for nine Grand Challenge Workshops and six Grand Challenge Projects.  Going forward, we anticipate the likelihood that future requests for workshop or collaboration projects will be at least partially redundant with previous requests.  To address this issue, and to encourage submission of new GC collaboration requests, iPlant has streamlined the approach to identifying new Grand Challenge projects.

New collaboration requests can now be made without holding a workshop, and can propose the development or modification of modules or Discovery Environments that build on iPlant’s existing cyberinfrastructure efforts to address new Grand Challenge Problems in plant science.  During iPlant’s third-year conference (planned for late May 2010), members of the two current Grand Challenge Teams will describe their cyberinfrastructure plans and accomplishments to date.  We expect that some of the modules or Discovery Environments in development at that time could be readily adapted to address new Grand Challenge Problems.  Following the conference, iPlant will solicit brief white papers describing the new GC problems to be explored. White papers will still undergo an official iPlant Board of Directors’ review and recommendation process to ensure that iPlant remains a community-driven effort .  However, iPlant’s original process of a GC Workshop followed by a GC Collaborative Project request is no longer the only approach the community can take to initiating and identifying a Grand Challenge project.

White Paper Review Criteria

The BoD will consider a variety of criteria in making recommendations to the Collaborative. These include, but are not limited to:

• The context and significance of the GC problem for advancing our understanding of plant biology.
• Whether a compelling case exists for how and why advancement of this area is being limited by lack of availability of computational tools and cyberinfrastructure, and the feasibility of overcoming existing obstacles.
• The capability of the proposed cyberinfrastructure projects to be transformative with respect to the GC questions.
• The scope, scale, quality and accessibility of the necessary data to the iPC project team and GC team during the project execution period, and the likelihood of additional relevant data becoming available in the near future.
• The feasibility of developing the proposed cyberinfrastructure.
• Appropriate expertise of the identified or proposed GC Team participants.
• Anticipated bottlenecks within the proposed GC Collaborative Project.
• Expectations for a division of responsibilities between the iPC project team and the proposed GC Team.
• The scope, scale and quality of EOT, its creative use of the cyberinfrastructure and its benefits/potential outcomes within the plant biology and computing communities.
• Plan for involvement of individuals from different domains. How will the group use the GC Collaborative Project to increase involvement of researchers in computer science, information systems, computational biology/bioinformatics, mathematics and modeling?
• Impact of the proposed project on community-building and computational thinking within the plant biology community and the larger community.

If you have any questions as you plan a GC workshop or GC project white paper, please contact Steve Goff, iPlant Project Director.