Sunday, 06 April 2008 07:28
The Collaborative's external Board of Directors met July 8 and 9, 2008, to review 9 Grand Challenge Workshop proposals. Four workshops were recommended to be held during the autumn of 2008. One or two additional workshops could be held in early 2009 (or 2008, if feasible). Below are links to one page summaries of the four prioritized workshops. Also, the Board recommended that the iPC's core project team begin work on 'preprojects' with the first two groups listed below, in order to give the team experience in working with "proto" Grand Challenge Teams and to initiate development of CI components that will be broadly useful. Workshops will still be held and full proposals will be required of these two groups before the Board commits to support of a full GC project. Workshops will be held in the conference facilities of the Biosphere 2, near Oracle, AZ: http://www.b2science.org/b2institutefacilities.html. (Future workshops may also be held at Cold Spring Harbor Lab's Banbury Conference Center on Long Island in NY.) - Mechanistic Basis of Plant Adaptation - David Salt, lead organizer. To be held at Biosphere 2; arrival September 30 - departure October 3, 2008
- Impacts of Climate Change on Plant Productivity World-Wide: Prediction of Phenotype from Genotype, Data Integration for Analysis, and Prediction Across Process Scales - Ruth Grene, lead organizer. To be held at Biosphere 2; arrival September 30 - departure October 3, 2008
- Developing common models for molecular mechanisms, crop physiology, and ecological studies: rhythms, stress challenges and growth opportunities. Stacey Harmer, lead organizer. To be held at Biosphere 2; arrival November 7 - departure November 10, 2008
- Assembling the tree of life to enable the plant sciences (iPTOL): A proposal for an iPlant Grand Challenge Workshop - Michael Donoghue, lead organizer. To be held at Biosphere 2; arrival November 19 - departure November 23, 2008
- Computational Morphodynamics of Plants - Eric Mjolsness, lead organizer. To be held at Biosphere 2; arrival Dec. 15 - departure Dec. 18, 2008
Please see Information for Invited Participants (pdf) for travel information. Please direct questions to
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or to the workshop lead organizer.
External Evaluation
Thursday, 05 June 2008 09:18
The iPlant Collaborative has contracted with an external evaluator to independently measure the success of iPlant in relation to the project’s defined goals and outcomes. Evaluation services are provided by East Main Educational Consulting, LLC located in Wilmington, NC ( www.econline.com). The external evaluator will provide insight regarding the planned and implemented activities of the project through independent data collection using quantitative and qualitative methods that include surveys, interviews, and document analysis among others. At times, the community will be asked to provide data for the evaluation through online surveys. The data provided by the community will be analyzed and combined with other project data sources, which will then be organized into formative reports and provided to the project team. The reports will provide information regarding successes and areas for improvement, so that the project team and the Board of Directors can make data-based project decision such as when to strengthen existing services, expand effective services, identify additional needs, prepare long-range plans, and focus attention on programmatic issues. If evaluation data warrant, the project team may modify the project plan in order to better achieve the project goals. In addition to interim formative reports, the external evaluators will generate annual reports that aggregate yearly data and provide the project team with estimations of goal attainment. The feedback provided by the community will impact the success of the iPlant project and your confidential feedback submitted to EMEC will greatly assist with the development and implementation of the project activities. Email from the external evaluators will always have iPlant in the subject line.
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Privacy Statement
Monday, 11 February 2008 22:13
Information Collected by iPlant Collaborative (iPC)
E-mail and Form Information: iPC does not obtain personal information about you when you visit our web sites or through other online services unless you provide us that information voluntarily. If an individual sends an e-mail message with a question or comment or fills out a web-based form, and either form or communication contains personally identifying information, that information will only be used to directly respond to the requester, unless otherwise stated specifically. The request for information may be redirected to another parts of iPC that may be in a better position to respond to the request. Any personal information you provide will not be released to outside parties unless we are legally required to do so in connection with legal proceedings, law enforcement investigations, or state law.
System-Generated Information: In addition to information actively provided by individuals using iPC Web sites, computational resources and other online services, iPC may record information such as but not limited to the following types of information each time these access points are used:
- Internet address of the computer being used
- Web pages requested
- Referring Web page
- Browser used
- Date, time and duration of activity
- Passwords and accounts accessed
- Volume of data storage and transfer
- CPU, Network bandwidth consumption
- Applications utilized and duration of usage
iPC uses this information to monitor, preserve and enhance the functioning and integrity of the system. Information is collected for analysis and statistical purposes, and is used to help diagnose problems with the server and to carry out other administrative tasks, such as assessing what information is of most interest, determining technical design specifications and identifying system performance and/or problem areas. This information is not used in any way that would reveal personal information to external constituencies except as described above.
Cookies. Cookies are short pieces of information used by Web browsers to remember information provided by the user, such as passwords and preferences from past visits. Additional information on cookies is available at the Cookie Central Web site www.cookiecentral.com and in the publication from the Department of Energy Computer Incident Advisory Center: ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/bulletins/i-034.shtml. Some iPC Web sites use cookies to store service information. Some Web-based services require cookies for access. Any information that iPC may store in cookies is used exclusively for internal purposes only.
If you have additional questions about online privacy or security, you can contact the Business Continuity and Information Security (BCIS) office , via e-mail to
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, by phone (520) 621-4482, or you can send an inquiry by mail to Business Continuity and Information Security, 1077 N. Highland Ave., Tucson, AZ 85721.
Summer 2008 Teacher Opportunity
Thursday, 27 March 2008 06:37
iPlant Collaborative Teacher FellowshipExperience plant biology research in the 21st century!The iPlant Collaborative (iPC) is developing a national center to provide the world with cyberinfrastructure tools to address “grand challenge” questions in plant biology, ranging from ecosystems to molecules. The BIO5 Institute at The University of Arizona is leading the Collaborative in which plant scientists, computer scientists, and information management experts will 1) identify the grand challenge research questions in Plant Science, 2) develop and build the supporting cyberinfrastructure, and 3) educate the next generation of students to work on multidisciplinary projects in plant biology that require computational thinking. iPC offers an unprecedented opportunity to involve educators in 21st century biological and computational education and research. In the first summer, we are inviting high school biology, math, and technology/computer science teachers to spend 4 weeks immersed in cutting-edge plant science research. In coming years, the program will be expanded to middle and elementary teachers. This summer, teachers will: • Participate in computational plant biology research* as a member of a multidisciplinary team. • Learn about plant biology and related mathematics and Computational Thinking topics. • Review and advise on curriculum materials to integrate computational plant biology into classrooms. • Plan how to disseminate information and discoveries within schools. • Use the latest technology to interact and share discoveries during and after the program.
Biology, mathematics, or computer science teachers may apply individually or as a team from the same school or district. Teachers receive stipends, but housing is not provided. When: 4 weeks, Mon. June 2 – Fri. June 27, All day Location: University of Arizona, Tucson Application Deadline: April 28, 2008
* What is computational plant biology research? Research that requires computational approaches: • Genome projects depend on and drive advances in sequence analysis algorithms. • Scientists use sophisticated data mining algorithms to search scientific databases daily. • A plethora of new 2- and 3-D imaging software tools are invaluable for studying cells, whole organisms, and ecosystems. • Biologists use mathematical models to understand the complexity of gene expression and protein networks, population dynamics, and environmental processes.
To Apply:Mac users do not open the Application Form in “Preview”, the default application for opening PDF files. Read the information in the Application Form and follow the instructions for applying.
Contact Dr. Martha L. Narro
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if you have questions about the application process.
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Acknowledgements: The iPlant Collaborative is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation Plant Cyberinfrastructure Program(#EF-0735191).
