Encyclopedia of Life Blog

NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, hosted representatives from EOL and the major national biology centers Oct 6-7.  The meeting focused on how EOL and the national centers can communicate effectively about science and can improve science education training and programs.  Although the centers have different foci (evolution = NESCent, ecological observations = NEON, plants = iPlant, mathematical biology = NIMBioS, biodiversity = EOL BioSynC, ecology = NCEAS), they have a common mission to advance scientific knowledge, to improve understanding about science, and to help train future scientists.  All of the centers host postdoctoral scientists, interns, and synthesis meetings, but their methods for training and communication vary widely. Centers use combinations of press releases, blogs, twitter, facebook, local NPR stations, local reporters, and news services to get their message out.  The centers range in age from 15 years (NCEAS) to 0 years (NEON) and we spent a lot of time discussing best practices and learning from the more senior centers.  EOL was represented by Audrey Aronowsky (Synthesis Group) and Tracy Barbaro (L&E Group).  The meeting was an excellent opportunity for EOL to collaborate with the national bio centers for potential EOL content, but more importantly for increasing the public’s awareness of and interest in science.

February is coming to a chilly end in the heartland. Besides sitting around in long underwear and rhapsodizing about how warm and lucky all the people going to the upcoming TED conference next week in Monterrey, California (Feb. 28th) are going to be, the BioSynC has been active in several areas. We have been hosting visitors, working on outreach and planning future meetings, here is the latest:

Construction of the center is buzzing along, with lights, ceiling, and doors installed recently, and we are excited to see that the colored accent walls have been painted-heralding the final push to finish by the end of March. Here are some pictures of the unfinished (but getting close) space:

On February 5, we were happy to have a visit from Jamee Field, new member of the Board of Trustees at the Field Museum (and daughter of Marshall Field) in order to see the progress of the new center facilities.

On February 7th Audrey Aronowsky, Rick Ree and Mark Westneat had a conference call with the team at Adobe Systems and got an update on the progress of new phylogenetic tree visualization that they are creating as a portal to the EOL. Visualization tools for evolution and biogeography are a central goal of BioSynC, and we are looking forward to having our collaborative visualization tool demonstrated by Adobe at TED.

On Feb. 8, Mark Westneat presented a seminar to the High School Transformation Project of the Education Department, entitled “Coral Reef Fishes: Biodiversity, Evolution and Bioinformatics”, highlighting potential uses of the Encyclopedia of Life for teachers and students.

On February 11th Audrey Aronowsky attended a meeting at the MacArthur Foundation along with Field Museum’s Elizabeth Babcock (Education) and Steve Strohmeier (Institutional Advancement) to discuss a digital learning initiative that MacArthur is interested in funding that will involve both the Field Museum and the EOL.

BioSynC is participating in and hosting two upcoming synthesis meetings. The first one, “IEDG 2008: Integrating Evolution, Development and Genomics” will take place May 28th-30th at UC Berkeley and will be hosted by Berkeley graduate students led by Jan Vendetti. The second one, “Mega-phylogeny Assembly by Literature-mining and Grafting” will take place April 18th-20th, and will be the first meeting to take place in the completed center. It will be led by Assistant Director Rick Ree and will focus on assembling a phylogeny of North American vascular plants. The main purpose of the meeting will be to train students how to use numerous computer applications to assemble and graft together phylogenetic trees.