Researcher

Research Spotlight: Using Citizen Science Data for Conservation

Elizabeth White is a fourth-year PhD candidate at the University of Florida where she works with research-grade data from iNaturalist, a popular citizen science platform, in combination with herbarium data from iDigBio (Integrated Digitized Biocollections) and GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility). By connecting citizen science data, ecological models, and land management strategies, her work aims to create a more holistic understanding of endemic species conservation.

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Viruses: friends or foes?

Dr. Richard Allen White III is a computational and molecular virologist at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He works to understand the virosphere, how it interplays with the environment, and how it interacts with humans and reservoir mammals.

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Integrating Collections and Ecological Research

Exploring unique values in iDigBio using Apache Spark

Data exploration for large datasets is always challenging. Often you are left with deciding between subsetting the dataset (randomly or on some facet), making slow progress waiting for results just to find that something needs to be fixed, or optimizing code for performance when you don't even know if the result is going to be interesting. Having a high-performance system capable of ad-hoc investigation has always been difficult and/or expensive.

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