PSCIC Working Group: Parag Chitnis Chris Greer Susan Lolle Sam Scheiner Jane Silverthorne Bill Zamer Manfred Zorn

Converging forces for progress: Plant Science Computational and Computer Sciences and Engineering Cyberinfrastructure

… is the organized aggregate of technologies that enable us to access and integrate today’s information technology resources—data and storage, computation, communication, visualization, networking, scientific instruments, expertise—to facilitate science and engineering goals. - Fran Berman, Director, SDSC Cyberinfrastructure …

Plant Science Cyberinfrastructure Collaborative PSCIC NSF Anticipated funding amount: 1 Award Up to $50M over 5 years

National Plant Genome Initiative NPGI has produced, and will continue to produce, enormous amounts of plant genome data, which need to be made accessible to a broad community of scientists in a useable form …. Significant and broad efforts should be directed toward programs that enable individuals or groups to access, analyze and compare data. NPGI Progress Report,

Mid-course Assessment of the Arabidopsis 2010 Project: Researchers at universities, undergraduate institutions, and community colleges have and will continue to benefit from the information, tools, and other resources generated through To maximize the benefit, developing the cyber infrastructure for the dispersed network of 2010 resources … is imperative.

Recommendations: 1.There is a strong need to create a plant cyberinfrastructure center to promote the integration of diverse and large-scale genomics and other data to address a few fundamental problems in plant biology using multi-disciplinary approaches. Report of the NSF Workshop for a Plant Cyberinfrastructure Center; October 17-18, 2005

Synthesis of Ideas “If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas.” -- George Bernard Shaw

Imagine …. New types of scientific organizations enabled by cyberinfrastructure that “serve individuals, teams and organizations in ways that revolutionize … … what they can do, how they do it, and who participates.” Revolutionizing Science and Engineering Through Cyberinfrastructure: Report of the NSF Blue-Ribbon Advisory Panel on Cyberinfrastructure

Biology Computer/ Information Science Cyber- Infra- structure Imagine …. A new type of organization that is unified, like Borromean rings, by its interlocking elements of … … biology, computer and information sciences, and cyberinfrastructure

Imagine …. A center for computational thinking in biology Focus on grand challenge questions in plant science Catalyzing new synthesis through interactions between biologists, computer and information scientists, and other disciplines A Plant Science Cyberinfrastructure Collaborative

Interorganizational – Distributed Source: Diana Rhoten, Social Science Research Council

Transorganizational - Hybrid Source: Diana Rhoten, Social Science Research Council

Characteristics of the Collaborative: Driven by Plant Science Challenges Interdisciplinary Innovative Community-driven Accountable Diverse Effectively managed

Responsibilities of the Collaborative: Catalyze progress through computational and cyberinfrastructure solutions Enable creative synthesis and integration Prepare the next generation Enable discovery through information access Lead in outreach

Examples of Synthesis Activities: National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent)

Program Solicitation: Anticipated funding amount: 1 Award Up to $50M over 5 years Eligible Organizations: US academic institutions and non-profit research organizations

Review Timeline: Preproposal due date: November 30, 2006 Full proposal target date April 16, 2007 Anticipated site visits: June, 2007

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” --Albert Einstein