On 9/23/09, NSF's Dr. James Collins (NSF Assistant Director for Biological Sciences) presented a sweeping vision of the future direction of the biological sciences, the role of science in national policy, and how national facilities like the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) play an integral part in advancing the frontiers of the biological sciences and the geosciences. Powerpoint-synchronized video segments of his talk and brief summaries of each segment are available at:
http://tinyurl.com/nsfcollins2009. Summary of the presentation: Dr. Collins talks about the evolving role of science in national policy, and whether there is a role for the scientific community in the national dialog around climate, energy, and the environment. He outlines the vision for an integrated research approach incorporating modeling, experiments, and observations, and explains how NEON will foster advances in computational thinking, multi-scale thinking, and synthesizing biological systems at different scales. Dr. Collins provides a peek into NSFs internal prototyping activities to enable cutting edge interdisciplinary science, and briefly describes the plan to support NEON-related PI research. He explains how the community has stewardship of large-scale platforms like NEON for advancing the state of knowledge of coupled natural -human systems. Dr. Collins finishes by painting a vision for how NEON can be used to clarify an ever-changing present, and inform the future with wisdom for the good of the nation. ------------------------------- Brian Peck-Sheng Wee, Ph.D. Chief of External Affairs National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON), Inc. 900 17th Street NW, Suite 700, Washington, D. C. 20006 http://www.neoninc.org Phone: 202-552-4704 Fax: 202-737-6410
