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GAINESVILLE, Fla. — With the goal of promoting life-long learning, University of Florida researchers will use a four-year, $1.97 million National Science Foundation grant to create a nationwide network of amateur and professional paleontologists.
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Press Release 13-135
NSF Awards Third Round of Grants to Advance Digitization of Biodiversity Collections
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The National Science Foundation has recently published its Collections in Support of Biological Research(CSBR) Solicitation.
The Collections in Support of Biological Research (CSBR) Program provides funds: 1) for improvements to secure, improve, and organize collections that are significant to the NSF BIO-funded research community; 2) to secure collections-related data for sustained, accurate, and efficient accessibility of the collection to the biological research community; and 3) to transfer collection ownership responsibilities.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has announced the availability of funding to enhance and expand digitization of and access to existing biological and paleontological collections in the United States.
The Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections is seeking full proposals for its third round of funding. Proposals will be accepted for new research themes (Thematic Collections Networks) and for partnerships with existing networks (Partners to Existing Network).
Last year, the National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections (ADBC) program, responded to the need for greater accessibility of biological collections data by awarding four major grants.
This year, NSF funded four, additional major grants, along with two smaller awards that link to and enhance one of last year's projects.
On 19 March, NSC Alliance submitted testimony to the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies. The testimony was in support of funding the National Science Foundation (NSF).
The testimony highlighted the contributions of NSF’s Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO) to science, education, and research infrastructure.
Six months after receiving $10 million from the National Science Foundation to organize digitization of the nation’s biological collections, University of Florida researchers welcomed participants to Gainesville this week for the project’s kick-off symposium.
July 8, 2011
Centuries of discovery document the diversity of life on Earth. Records of that biodiversity are, for the most part, in varied and distinct natural history collections, making assessing the information a difficult task.
Now, the National Science Foundation (NSF), through its Advancing Digitization of BiodiversityCollections program, is responding to the need for greater accessibility of biological collections data by awarding four major grants that seek to create a national resource of digital data documenting existing biological collections.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to Florida State University and the University of Florida to coordinate 92 institutions in 45 states working to digitize the nation's biological collections. FSU's Center for Information Management and Scientific Communication, in the College of Communication & Information, will work with UF's Florida Museum of Natural History and its College of Engineering Advanced Computing Information Systems Laboratory to create software and databases the nationwide participants will use to transfer and store the data.
The accelerated loss of biodiversity, the "Biodiversity Crisis", is one of the leading environmental and social issues of the 21st century. Although natural biological diversity is fundamentally important to a healthy and sustainable planet, responses to the crisis have suffered from incomplete information and inadequate policies for sustainable use of natural resources. Information relevant to addressing the impact of declining biodiversity is housed within the nation's natural history and related biosystematic collections, but is inaccessible to most researchers and policy makers.
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The National Science Foundation announced today its award of a $10 million grant to the University of Florida and Florida State University to coordinate 92 institutions in 45 states working to digitize the nation’s biological collections.
Available to anyone online, the natural history data and its increased accessibility will help researchers identify gaps in scientific knowledge and could assist government agencies and others making decisions related to climate change, conservation, invasive species, biodiversity and other biological issues.
