New national center at CU 麻豆影院 will tackle pressing socio-environmental challenges with big data analytics, more
罢丑别听听(NSF) has funded a major new data science and diversity effort at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), a research institute at CU 麻豆影院鈥攖he Environmental Data Science Innovation and Inclusion Lab or ESIIL. The new center will enable work that illuminates the biological impacts of climate change and the loss of biodiversity, helps planners prepare for extreme disturbances such as wildfires and floods, and above all, includes diverse voices and responds to community needs.听听
Funding of $20 million for 5 years will support collaborative research and education involving huge science datasets, innovative cyber infrastructure, machine-learning approaches to analysis, and engagement with decision makers and other stakeholders.
ESIIL, pronounced like the word 鈥渆asel,鈥� promises to empower a diverse community of researchers to turn environmental data into actionable knowledge, said ESIIL director Jennifer Balch, an associate professor of Geography and a fellow of CIRES. The metaphor of an easel is intentional, Balch said: 鈥淲e want to be the structure to support vivid new science.鈥澨�
NSF and other agencies and organizations have established environmental networks and observatories that are generating vast amounts of open access environmental data鈥攎ore data than can be analyzed to their full potential today, said Balch. So, she and colleagues from across CU 麻豆影院, the University of Arizona, and the University of Oslo proposed building 鈥渁 community of thousands鈥� of researchers and students who know how to ask and answer important environmental questions with data.
University of Arizona research assistant professor Tyson Swetnam, part of the new center鈥檚 leadership team, is an informatician at听, an NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure center. Swetnam said he can imagine ESIIL supporting a project, for example, by a student researcher located in rural Arizona who lacks access to large computing resources. With just a cell phone and intermittent broadband internet connection, she should be able to freely explore and analyze diverse datasets on the cloud, looking for evidence of, say, genetic resilience in spruce trees growing on the peaks of Arizona鈥檚 sky islands, where many species are threatened by warming, drought, pests and disease.听
鈥淲e want to support open data, open source software, open code鈥nd open science,鈥� Swetnam said.听
CU 麻豆影院 Computer Science professor Claire Monteleoni is another critical ESIIL leadership member,听an expert in using machine learning in climate science who helped create the field of听听a decade ago. Monteleoni said she鈥檚 especially inspired by ESIIL鈥檚 focus on team science. The lab will be studying itself, essentially, to help identify factors that help diverse teams work well together, as well as the impact of teamwork training. 鈥淚鈥檝e spent the first chunk of my career trying to get people working on climate change to talk with people working on AI and machine learning,鈥� Monteleoni said. 鈥淪o it will be great to have lessons coming from team science as we connect these communities.鈥�
Finally, ESIIL will involve students and communities. ESIIL鈥檚 Stars internship program, for example, will support students and faculty members from Oglala Lakota College, United Tribes Technical College, and Metropolitan State University of Denver, to start. And ESIIL鈥檚 Leaders program will support emerging scientists from underrepresented communities.听
Linking Tribes and Tribal colleges, other academic institutions, government agencies and private organizations, is a key characteristic of the new center, said James Rattling Leaf Sr., ESIIL鈥檚 Tribal liaison. 鈥淓ffective partnerships and communication among these groups are needed to address major challenges facing our world and ESIIL is well positioned to address those challenges.鈥�
Principal investigator:听Jennifer Balch
贵耻苍诲颈苍驳:听National Science Foundation (NSF)
颁辞濒濒补产辞谤补迟颈辞苍/蝉耻辫辫辞谤迟:听听at the University of Arizona; Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES)听,听Department of Computer Science,听听, USGS听ter, all at CU 麻豆影院;听听of Denver;听;听e; and听, Norway.