This Americas Program award will support a program development workshop organized by Dr. James H. Beach of the University of Kansas Center for Research and Dr. Julio Ibarra of Florida International University. The workshop, which will be jointly sponsored by various science agencies of Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica and Colombia, will be concerned with applications of new tools and working methodologies to biodiversity. These tools derive from advances in computing, related information technologies, and the growing infrastructure-the cyberinfrastructure-that is currently under development globally. The workshop will be held in Panama City, early in January 2006 and will explore opportunities and breakthrough activities with the aim of promoting future collaborations in biodiversity informatics and research.
Prior to the availability of ubiquitous data network connectivity, biodiversity research collaborations required face-to-face professional interactions in the form of field work, in-residence stays, or other kinds of visits, and relied mainly on paper documents and mail for remote coordination and communication. Today many research communities, including the systematics, phylogenetics and ecology communities, are on the cusp of transformative change as a consequence of network capacity that will enable a new class of research collaboration based on instant interaction with networked information servers and computational services, in a paradigm known as "Grid Computing." High throughput international backbones linking desktops of scientists around the world will help launch a new class of research collaborations with scientists "wired together" in a virtual, global, biodiversity collaboration environment.
To set the stage and prepare for this transformation in research communications among North and Central American countries, the workshop will include 40-50 invited leading biology researchers, cyberinfrastructure technologists, and funding agency representatives from the United States, Mexico, Panama, Costa Rica, Colombia, and various other Central American countries. It will be focused on identifying activities that will enable North and Central American partnerships and collaborations. Outcomes will include recommendations for follow-on activities and suggestions for investments to promote international informatics collaboration. The broader impacts of the meeting will, ultimately, lead to new modes of collaboration, supporting biodiversity research and analysis for policy and planning, to better understand the ecological and societal impacts of global biodiversity. This workshop is being jointly supported by the Division of Environmental Biology, the Office of Cyberinfrastructure, and the Office of International Science and Engineering.
