SEN March Newsletter

Dear Experimentalists,

We have a few important events and updates we want to let you know about.

This issue contains the following:

      1.     Joint SEN-CSDMS Meeting

      2.     SEN-CSDMS Travel Grant Contest

      3.     Upcoming Webinars

      4.     Updates to SEN Knowledge Base

CSDMS/SEN Annual Meeting

SEN will be cohosting the Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System’s (CSDMS) annual meeting being held on May 17-19^th, 2016 in Boulder, Colorado.  This year’s theme is Capturing Climate Change.  Keynote talks and hands-on clinics will focus on “advances in simulating the imprint of climate change on the land and seascapes, including the processes that influence them”. For more information or to register, please follow this link.

SEN Travel Grant Contest to CSDMS/SEN Annual Meeting

DEADLINE April 1st

SEN is sponsoring a data-utilization contest for graduate-student and early-career geoscience modelers who feel passionate about advancing science through experimental data sharing and reuse. The top four winners of the data-utilization contest will have all travel and registration costs paid for. For more information or to register, please follow this link.

Upcoming Webinars

We are excited to announce the next in our series of "EarthCube Tools" webinars, which will be useful for any scientists needing to manage or share their research data:

Title: CHORDS: Lowering barriers to real-time data integration

Date/time: Friday, April 1, at 2 pm EDT (1 PM CDT, 12 PM MDT, 11 AM PDT/MST, 8 AM HST)

Presenter: Dr. Mike Daniels, UCAR (EarthCube CHORDS - Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences)

Description: This webinar will describe Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences (CHORDS), a project developing tools to “acquire, navigate and distribute real-time data streams via cloud services and the Internet.” 

Call-in and event details are available here.

About the webinars:

The EarthCube Tools for Doing Geoscience webinar series, organized by the Science Committee of the NSF-sponsored EarthCube program, provides practical demonstrations of how EarthCube projects can help you to collect, access, share, and visualize geoscience data. Each webinar begins with a showcase of an EarthCube funded project followed by ample time for questions and conversation. Wary of EarthCube jargon? Presenters will describe their projects in plain English for scientists in all disciplines who may be unfamiliar with EarthCube. Here’s a chance for you (and your colleagues, team members, and students) to learn about EarthCube and how it can help to advance your scientific work. More information on the webinar series is available here. Archived video will be available on the website about one week after the webinar.

Upcoming webinar:

“Geosemantics”

Friday, May 6, 2 pm EDT (1 PM CDT, 12 PM MDT, 11 AM PDT/MST, 8 AM HST)

Updates to SEN Knowledge Base

The SEN team is continually making upgrades to the SEN Knowledge Base to make the user experience easier.  Please visit the site to submit data, workflow, or equipment entries into the wiki or to access posted data and content from other scientists in the community.  What would you like to see in the Knowledge Base? Is there an entry you wish were available? Let us know your comments and suggestions by emailing sedimentexp@gmail.com.

For up to date information about SEN, please check out our blog at http://sedimentexperiments.blogspot.com/ and follow us on Twitter (@sedimentexp).

Happy experimenting,

The Sediment Experimentalist Network

http://workspace.earthcube.org/sen

EarthCube Tools Webinar: "Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences (CHORDS)" - April 1, 2 PM EDT

Dear Experimentalists,

We are excited to announce the next in our series of "EarthCube Tools" webinars, which will be useful for any scientists needing to manage or share their research data:

Title: CHORDS: Lowering barriers to real-time data integration

Date/time: Friday, April 1, at 2 pm EDT (1 PM CDT, 12 PM MDT, 11 AM PDT/MST, 8 AM HST)

Presenter: Dr. Mike Daniels, UCAR (EarthCube CHORDS - Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences)

Description: This webinar will describe Cloud-Hosted Real-time Data Services for the Geosciences (CHORDS), a project developing tools to “acquire, navigate and distribute real-time data streams via cloud services and the Internet.”  

Call-in and event details are available here.

About the webinars:

The EarthCube Tools for Doing Geoscience webinar series, organized by the Science Committee of the NSF-sponsored EarthCube program, provides practical demonstrations of how EarthCube projects can help you to collect, access, share, and visualize geoscience data. Each webinar begins with a showcase of an EarthCube funded project followed by ample time for questions and conversation. Wary of EarthCube jargon? Presenters will describe their projects in plain English for scientists in all disciplines who may be unfamiliar with EarthCube. Here’s a chance for you (and your colleagues, team members, and students) to learn about EarthCube and how it can help to advance your scientific work. More information on the webinar series is available here. Archived video will be available on the website about one week after the webinar. 

Upcoming webinar:

“Geosemantics”

Friday, May 6, 2 pm EDT (1 PM CDT, 12 PM MDT, 11 AM PDT/MST, 8 AM HST)

P.S. We apologize for anyone who tried to connect to last week’s webinar, but could not due to a 25 person limit. Unfortunately there was an error with WebEx that we believe is now resolved. The slides and link to the video on YouTube from last week’s webinar are available here.

Reminder: DEADLINE approaching for SEN-CSDMS travel grant contest

Reminder that the April 1st deadline for entry to the SEN/CSDMS travel grant contest is soon approaching. Please find detailed information about the contest below:


The Sediment Experimentalist Network (SEN) is sponsoring a data-utilization contest for graduate-student and early-career geoscience modelers who feel passionate about advancing science through experimental data sharing and reuse. The top four winners of the data-utilization contest will have all travel and registration costs paid for their participation at the 2016 joint CSDMS (Community Surface Dynamics Modeling System) - SEN annual meeting in Boulder, CO, on May 17-19, 2016.

The Sediment Experimentalist Network (SEN) is funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) EarthCube program as a Research Coordination Network (RCN). SEN integrates the efforts of sediment experimentalists to build a knowledge base for data collection and management. The network facilitates cross-institutional collaborative experiments and communicates with the research community about data and metadata guidelines for sediment-based experiments. This effort aims to improve the efficiency and transparency of sedimentary research for field geologists and modelers as well as experimentalists. More information is available here: http://earthcube.org/group/sen

In contrast with past contests focused on submission of data entries to the SEN Knowledge Base (www.sedexp.net), the purpose of this contest is toward the utilization of Knowledge Base entries and the coordination of new collaborations between modelers and experimentalists through SEN toward achieving science goals.  In particular, how can sediment experimental data be utilized to inform, test, and refine models and predictions for earth surface processes?  This will be a major goal of this year’s joint CSDMS-SEN annual meeting on “Capturing Climate Change.”

Applicants will be judged primarily on the basis of a brief (2 page max) proposal describing how items in the SEN Knowledge Base can help to answer a science question of interest.  We particularly encourage contest entrants to try to track down data and existing experimental facilities and their capabilities listed on the SEN Knowledge Base.  If data can be found, we encourage descriptions of preliminary analyses in the proposal.  If data cannot be found or are difficult to use, please explain the problems you encountered and ways these problems might be addressed in future development of the SEN Knowledge Base.  If data do not exist but potential experimental collaborators can be found, please describe a collaborative project that can be coordinated through SEN. (Please note that we will be highlighting the proposals of successful applications during the CSDMS / SEN meeting.)

Eligibility

This contest is open to current graduate students and early career scientists (within 5 years of graduating) who are interested in advancing science through data sharing and reuse.

Requirements

1. Sign up for the SEN Newsletter: http://goo.gl/s7dLjb
2. Create a Knowledge Base account at www.sedexp.net
3. Start browsing entries containing experimental data, set-ups, methods, and equipment relevant to your science question.
4. Think of an earth-surface science question to be answered using experimental data and/or new collaborations with experimentalists and prepare your proposal as described above.
5. Prepare an abstract for the SEN / CSDMS that mentions your proposed data utilization idea, and include this in your presentation at the meeting.  The data utilization idea does not need to be a central feature of your CSDMS presentation, but it should be included.
6. Write a brief (one paragraph) professional biography.
7. Deadline for submissions is April 1, 2016.  When registering for the CSDMS meeting, be sure to check the box to indicate that you are applying for the SEN / CSDMS travel grant.  Then, send your application materials (proposal, professional biography) to sedimentexp@gmail.com by April 1, 2016.

Selection of Winners

Winners will be selected on the following criteria:

1. Originality of proposal.
2. Depth of engagement with the SEN Knowledge Base.
3. Applicability of proposal to planned presentation at CSDMS.
4. Feasibility of proposal and qualifications of applicant toward proposed idea.

Winners will be notified via email and will be given instructions on the funding process. Names of winners will also be featured in the SEN Newsletter. Winners should acknowledge funding from NSF SEN when presenting their work at the CSDMS meeting.

Timeline

~January 15th: Contest opens

April 1st: Deadline for CSDMS abstract submission, registration, and SEN travel grant application

April 15th: Notification of winners

May 17-19th: CSDMS meeting (Boulder, Colorado)

Questions? Please contact SEN at sedimentexp@gmail.com.

EarthCube Tools Webinar: "Cyber Tools for Research" - March 11, 2 PM EST

Dear Experimentalists,

I am excited to announce the next in our series of "EarthCube Tools" webinars, which will be useful for any scientists needing to manage or share their research data:

Title: Cyber Tools for Research: A tour through the hardware store of useful tools for managing your data and research work

Date/time: Friday, March 11, at 2 pm EST (1 PM CST, 12 PM MST, 11 AM PST, 9 AM HST)

Presenter: Ouida Meier (EarthCube CRESCYNT - Coral Reef Science and Cyberinfrastructure Network, University of Hawaii)

Description: This webinar will present the wide range of existing tools, from both inside and outside EarthCube, that are useful for managing data and research workflows.

Call-in and event details are available here.

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About the webinars:

The EarthCube Tools for Doing Geoscience webinar series, organized by the Science Committee of the NSF-sponsored EarthCube program, provides practical demonstrations of how EarthCube projects can help you to collect, access, share, and visualize geoscience data. Each webinar begins with a showcase of an EarthCube funded project followed by ample time for questions and conversation. Wary of EarthCube jargon? Presenters will describe their projects in plain English for scientists in all disciplines who may be unfamiliar with EarthCube. Here’s a chance for you (and your colleagues, team members, and students) to learn about EarthCube and how it can help to advance your scientific work. More information on the webinar series is available here. Archived video will be available on the website about one week after the webinar.

Upcoming webinar:

“CHORDS: Lowering barriers to real-time data integration”

Friday, April 1, 2 pm EDT (1 PM CDT, 12 PM MDT, 11 AM PDT/MST, 8 AM HST)