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February 2008
- Feb 1st
Mark Westneat gave a half-hour presentation to the strategic initiatives committee (a subcommittee of the board of trustees at the Field Museum).
- Feb 2nd
The Encyclopedia of Life was featured on the cover of this weeks issue of Science News and BioSynC Director Mark Westneat was quoted extensively in the article. View the article here.
- Feb 5th
We were happy to have a visit from Jamee Field, new member of the Board of Trustees (and daughter of Marshall Field) in order to see the progress of the new center facilities.
- Feb 6th
BioSynC hosted a visit from F. Chris Tompson from the USDA and Smithsonian, who is editor of the Biosystematic Database of World Diptera and co-PI on the dipteran Tree of Life grant. Discussions focused on EOL goals and planning for an initial synthesis meeting on dipteran taxonomy and phylogeny. Also, BioSynC attended the A. Watson Armour Seminar Talk given by Dr. Benoit Dayrat titled: “What Future of Taxonomy?" The talked sparked much heated debate over the future of taxonomy.
- Feb 7th
BioSynC approved a synthesis meeting hosted by Berkeley graduate students led by Jan Vendetti called: “IEDG 2008: Integrating Evolution, Development and Genomics” which will take place May 28th-30th 2008 at UC Berkely. BioSynC will participate in the meeting and contribute to meeting expenses (www.evodevo.org).
- Feb 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 the upcoming Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference in Monterrey CA on Feb. 28.
- Feb 8th
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.
- Feb 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.
- Feb 11th
BioSynC approved a synthesis meeting proposal "Mega-phylogeny Assembly by Literature-mining and Grafting". The meeting 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.
- Feb 14th
BioSynC staff went on a field trip to the National Museum of Mexican Art to see the exhibit “Hornes, Hooves, Wings, Fins and Tails: Animal Imagery in the Permanent collection” in order to gather ideas about the use of biodiversity in culture and art.
- Feb 22nd
Audrey Aronowsky and Elizabeth Babcock met again with Rick Panginaban from the MacCarthur funded initiative, Global Kids. They discussed two digital learning initiatives that will incorporate the EOL and the Field Museum. The first, virtual fieldwork, would be a way to virtually bring students to the field by having actual scientists takes footage during research. The footage would then be presented in one hour edited segments and eventually an interactive event will be hosted at the Field Museum which will be simulcast in both Secondlife and the real world so that both communities can interact. The second, a virtual coral reef, would start with a synthesis meeting at Global Kids, bringing together marine biologists, videographers and educators to create a virtual coral reef populated by organisms that would be linked to species pages. The reef would then be navigated by kids through Teen Secondlife.
- Feb 26th
The Encyclopedia of Life was officially launched, www.eol.org. The Field Museum is one of five cornerstone institutions that make up the EOL and John McCarter (president of the Field Museum) and Mark Westneat traveled to the TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference in Monterrey, CA for its official release on Thursday February 28th.
Continue to January 2008 >>
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