Historically, biodiversity, ecology, environmental biology and other areas of biology are strongly represented among collaborative efforts between the U.S., Mexican, and Central American research community. However, biological scientists and environmental experts have remained disconnected from the cyberinfrastructure efforts that are taking place globally and are lagging behind in the application of advanced cyber tools. To develop and strengthen applications for the growing cyberinfrastructure activities in the Americas, the biological-ecological and cyberinfrastructure communities are organizing a workshop that will bring together domain scientists, practitioners, policy makers and funding agency representatives to discuss the issues and challenges to build and sustain the technology infrastructure needed for international biodiversity research collaborations. 

The workshop will focus on identifying activities that will enable North and Central American partnerships, with an eye toward a more inclusive western hemisphere approach. Outcomes will include recommendations for follow-on activities and suggestions for investments to promote international informatics collaborations.

The Workshop on Cyberinfrastructure for International Biodiversity Research Collaboration is organized by the Biodiversity Research Center Informatics at the University of Kansas and the Center for Internet Augmented Research and Assessment (CIARA) at Florida International University, in partnership with the National Science Foundation, SENACYT of Panama, Internet2, CR-USA of Costa Rica, CONACYT of Mexico, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI).

NSF AWARD # 0549456