In this presentation before the NEON, Inc. membership, Dr. James P. Collins presented a compelling vision where NEON fits into the vision of how the United States has to deal with environmental challenges for the coming decades. An NSF approved copy of the presentation (below), the YouTube video of Dr. Collins, and a PowerPoint-synchronized-YouTube are available. A precis of the entire presentation is provided below, as well as links to the YouTube and PowerPoint-synchronized-YouTube video segments. If you are not able to view YouTube contents because of your institution's network firewall policies, downloadable PPT-synchronized-video segments may be downloaded instead (below). All the summaries below have not been endorsed by NSF, but are provided for you to quickly assess relevancy and interest.
Summary: Dr. Collins talks about the evolving role of science in national policy, and whether there is a role for the scientific community in the national dialog around climate, energy, and the environment. He outlines the vision for an integrated research approach incorporating modeling, experiments, and observations, and explains how NEON, as a biological and geosciences facility, can enable advances in computational thinking, multi-scale thinking, and synthesizing biological systems at different scales. Dr. Collins provides a peek into NSF’s internal prototyping activities to enable cutting edge interdisciplinary science, and briefly describes the plan to support NEON-related PI research. He explains how the community has stewardship of large-scale platforms like NEON for advancing the state of knowledge of coupled natural -human systems. Dr. Collins finishes by painting a vision for how NEON can be used to “clarify an ever-changing present, and inform the future with wisdom” for the good of the nation.
| Segment | Topics Covered Include | URL |
Segment 1: The changing science and technology environment
(13:52 minutes) | - An emergent emphasis of the need for cross-cutting, interdisciplinary research in climate change adaptation.
- The vision for an integrated research approach incorporating modeling, experiments, and observations, and implications for how science needs to be managed within and between disciplines.
- Language in FY2010 US House of Representatives Appropriations report about LTER, NEON, soil science, metagenomics, and use of distributed networks of sensors.
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Segment 2: Changing ways of doing science
(10:03 minutes) | - The evolving role of science in national policy, and whether there is a role for the scientific community in the national dialog around climate, energy, and the environment.
- The role of observation systems like NEON in the era of "petabyte science", and how NEON, as a biological and geosciences facility, can enable advances in computational thinking, multi-scale thinking, and synthesizing biological systems at different scales.
- How new enablement technologies will foster collaborative environments, and the cultural changes need to happen across universities, labs, and funding agencies.
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Segment 3: Managing the science
(9:36 minutes) | - New frameworks that NSF is undertaking to promote innovation across disciplines.
- Formation of the Integrated Global System Science group at NSF.
- How NSF is prototyping new approaches to identify the frontiers of research.
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Segment 4: Large-scale infrastructure for the biological sciences
(8:24 minutes) | - Access to the NEON infrastructure and how NSF is planning to foster NEON-related PI research via the Macrosystem Biology (MRRGS) solicitation.
- Frontier of mathematics associated with tipping points in environmental, geosciences, economic, and social systems, and its applicability to integrate across scales of analyses.
- Is the community at a tipping point where NEON will enable a new way of approaching how larger knowledge domains are linked together, and how the issue of connectivity through space and time will spur innovations in science and mathematics.
- The need for innovative student training.
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Segment 5: Synthesis
(5:00 minutes) | - The role of the community in stewarding a new era of synthesis and advancing the state of knowledge of coupled natural -human systems.
- The role of the community and long-term observing systems like NEON to "clarify an ever-changing present, and inform the future with wisdom", and how this contributes to the role of science in national policy.
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