Eleventh Heaven! We again have a special guest, Prof King Chow (HKUST), who will bring insight into what is probably the most successful open science network in the region: iGEM.
Why Open Science?
When Newton talked about “standing on the shoulders of giants” he was essentially talking about open-data. Academic research is (essentially) government funded, and the same issues apply to scientific outputs as any open data: availability and access, reuse and redistribution, and universal participation. The OKFN lists scientific data amongst one of the 8 key areas of open data, and while many first come across OKFN through CKAN and their work on open government data, their Open Science Working Group has been heavily involved in policy and projects in the science community, particularly since their publication of the Panton Principles for open data in science (http://pantonprinciples.org/).
Planned Outline:
Meet.11 will aim to show where open science fits into the open data ecosystem, and what lessons can be learned from science’s long (if imperfect) history of data sharing.
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Setting the scene and give an overview of the many types of open science projects – Scott Edmunds (BGI/GigaScience)
Covering data sharing practices and issues with access and licensing, we will see how open data can fight disease outbreaks, harnessing the power of gamers to solve complex scientific problems, and how citizen science and DIYbio is getting everyone involved.
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OpenSciDev
Quick update on recent OKFN/IDRC organized workshop in Cape Town to harness open science to reach development goals. See: http://openscidev.com/
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an open science success story: iGEM
King Chow is a Professor Life Science and Biomedical Engineering at HKUST. Since 2008, he has been a keen participant in the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition advising the HKUST iGEM teams. Over the last three years, he helped organize, judge and host many of the Asian competitions, as well as judging in the iGEM World Championships. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of the iGEM Foundation and as a member of the Advisory Board of iGEM Headquarters in Boston to oversee the development of iGEM across the globe. With the aim of advancing the field of synthetic biology through development of open community collaboration, creating interfaces between life scientists and engineers, and use of standard, and interchangable parts, iGEM is probably the biggest and most successful open science network in Asia, with 68 university teams across the region participating this year. Harnessing students and (from next year hobbyists) participation in a competition/jamboree format, while at the same time teaching collaborative and open source approaches, encouraging full engagement with the government, educational, financial and industrial sectors, iGEM’s huge success may provide a useful lesson for how the wider open data community can engage with the public and grow. It’s also a huge amount of fun to see undergraduate charting from an ill defined field that is gradually taking shape over the years.