This Pan-American Advanced Studies Institute (PASI), jointly supported by the NSF and Department of Energy (DOE), will take place in San Jose, Costa Rica, in early 2007 on the topic of cyberinfrastructure for international collaborative biodiversity and ecological informatics. Organized by Drs. Julio Ibarra and James H. Beach of Florida International University and the University of Kansas respectively, the institute will involve approximately 30 participants from the United States and Latin America including graduate students and junior and established investigators, and about 12 instructors (internationally recognized scientists, active in the field). The activities will consist of a combination of tutorial lectures, advanced-topic presentations, round table discussions, and poster sessions, with the goal of providing the participants with an up-to-date review of the development and application of Internet-based cyberinfrastructure tools for environmental research collaboration. Ecological informatics is a research discipline that is building the cyberinfrastucture foundations for environmental research in the 21st century. CI-based research collaboration will likely be a predominant mechanism for investigations in the environmental sciences in the future.
The wide range of applications and materials will impart a significant interdisciplinary nature to the Institute, and should foster the cross-fertilization of new ideas to advance the field and, ultimately, increase relations between Latin American junior and senior investigators and their counterparts in the U.S. Materials presented at the Institute will be posted in a designated web site for further dissemination to the scientific community and the public at large.
