Transcript Welcome & When We Last Met…

Education/Outreach/Training (EOT)
Distributed Research Projects:
Education for Big Science
G2P Steering Committee
Workshop
January 13, 2010
Genomics in Education Workshop:
3 worlds/3 kingdoms
 June 16-19, Washington University, St. Louis
 44 participants from three “worlds”: researchers,
bioinformaticians/computer scientists,
educators/program administrators.
 Models and methods from three kingdoms:
bacteria, animals, and plants.
Educational Insights
 Students want a wet bench hook and have limited
patience for pure bioinformatics.
 Student-scientists partnerships: Someone has to care
about the data generated by students.
 Students as co-investigators: Projects should
potentially lead to publication.
 Need to scale up from individual classrooms to
distributed experiments.
 Trickle up: educational interfaces/tools > research.
Paradigm Shifts
for students and teachers
 Data-limited > data-unlimited environment.
 Hypotheses underdetermined by data > data
underdetermined by hypotheses.
 Working on one block in the edifice of science >
working on the whole edifice.
 Reductive biology > constructive biology.
 Data/tools only accessible to insiders > free access to
data/tools for anybody.
 Textbooks > science’s bleeding edge.
iPlant Education Projects
as approved by EOT Advisory Board
 Chloroplast Evolution and Phylogenetics: endosymbiosis &
lateral gene transfer; amplify and sequence rbcl and matK, next
generation sequencing of entire genomes (Pam Soltis)
 Maize Genomics and Genetics: genotype to phenotype with
whole genome resources; domestication as human-induced evolution,
cultural heritage; build on NSF PGI (Sue Wessler)
 Phenology of a Common Plant: citizen science; GoogleEarth
mashup to link grow characteristics to temporal, climatic, geographical
data; flowering “sentinel;” leaf drop; Project BudBurst (Steve Welch)
 Orphan Data: online “marketplace” connects researchers who have
abundance of data with educators/students who wish to analyze real-life
data; iPlant facilitator; annual symposium; project workshops gel
threshold communities (Steve Goff and Dave Micklos)
Next Steps for EOT
Sue Wessler, U. Georgia: new faculty lead
General problem to be dealt with: iPlant cannot generate data
Faculty Training Program: DNALC will establish a nationwide
workshop program to train faculty in using iPlant tools for student projects
that support integrative and computational thinking. TARGeT and DNA
Subway – the first EOT Discovery Environments to be ready – will be the
initial focus of the workshops, with additional Discovery Environments and
iPC tools being included as they come online. DNALC would like to work
with iPTOL project team to identify potential for holding workshops
collaboratively, define appropriate modules and sample data sets, and
identify workshop hosts and sites.
Next Steps for G2P
G2PEducational Gateway: EOT will assist G2P in informing
teachers, students and the public to learn about the G2P GCs. Need to
work with project team to embed outreach materials within the iPlant
portal. Wish to work with researchers to generate video interviews and
narrated animations that explain the conceptual background and
historical development of the G2P GCs. As they come online, we will also
develop educational interfaces to the DE and generate sample data sets.
Orphan Data Project: DNALC would like to work with G2P to identify
faculty who would benefit/be willing to provide their data to student
research projects, as well as faculty who would benefit from such an
exchange project – for their teaching as well as their research.
What Project should be given strong EOT support?
Phenology of a common Plant (Welch), Maize G2P (Wessler),
Brachypodium (Brutnell), ?????