Program Overview
The EOL Rubenstein Fellows program supports the research of a diverse group of scientists who are committed to online collaboration and outreach. The Fellows program is made possible through a generous donation by David M. Rubenstein to the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History.
The Encyclopedia of Life partners with CRDF to help administer the EOL Rubenstein Fellows program. Established in 1995 by the National Science Foundation to (www.crdf.org) promote international scientific and technical collaboration through grants, technical resources, and training.
This international program seeks to support and extend the impact of original biodiversity research by postgraduates, graduate students, and other scientists, and to tap into the knowledge and expertise of late career and retired scientists. EOL Rubenstein Fellows funds provide partial support for up to one year so that biodiversity research, databases, and media can be effectively translated into rich, online resources available through the Encyclopedia of Life. Fellows are encouraged to engage in collaborative and synthetic work with a community of colleagues. Fellows also help EOL develop effective strategies for engaging and supporting the scientific community.
Introducing the 2013 class of EOL Rubenstein Fellows!
To see Fellows who have previously participated in the program please visit our Past Fellows page.
The 2013 Rubenstein Research Fellowships awards are:
1. Chantal-Marie Wright, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA
“Using the Encyclopedia of Life to Explore Altitude Specificity of Flower Coloration”
Image analysis of flower photos on EOL will reveal whether different colors dominate at different altitudes.
Collaborator: Katja Seltmann, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA
updates at Chantal's project website
2. Jorrit Poelen, Oakland, CA, USA
“Unleashing EOL's Species Interaction Datasets—Integration, Visualization, and Analysis”
Taxon associations will be revealed from EOL text and resolved into ecological networks.
Collaborators: Chris Mungall, Lawrence Berkeley Labs, Berkeley, CA, USA; Robert Reiz, Berlin, Germany; James Simons, Center for Coastal Studies, Texas A&M University Corpus Christi, TX, USA
updates at Jorrit's blog
3. Jonathan Chang, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Remote participants will mark up and measure fish photos on EOL to reveal patterns in anatomy and extinction risk.
Collaborator: Michael Alfaro, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
updates at Jonathan's blog
4. Jose Ferrer-Paris, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas, Caracas, Venezuela and South African National Biodiversity Institute, Cape Town, South Africa
Butterfly-plant associations from EOL text will be compared and combined with other sources to assess the state of our knowledge of this ecological relationship.
Collaborator: Ada Sanchez Mercado, Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (IVIC), Caracas, Venezuela
updates at José's Scratchpad
5. Congtian Lin, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Different taxonomic classifications will be compared in order to discover patterns of agreement and controversy in current taxonomy.
Collaborator: Jiangning Wang, Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
6. Barbara Banbury, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
“Reol: Developing an R interface to EOL”
Numerical data will be made available to scientists in the standard desktop analysis tool “R”, so they can analyze patterns in biodiversity information, such as “Which groups of mollusks have images available and which have common names in French?”
Collaborator: Brian O'Meara, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA
updates at Barb's blog
7. Evangelos Pafilis, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Institute of Marine Biology, Biotechnology and Aquaculture (IMBBC), Crete, Greece
“ENVIRONMENTS: Discovering habitat terms in EOL Contents”
Habitat descriptors, like “coral reef”, “desert”, “tundra” and so on will be extracted from EOL articles into meaningful tags, which will allow us to index species by habitat type.
Collaborators: Christina Pavloudi, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Crete, Greece ; Julia Schnetzer, Bremen, Germany; Lucia Fanini, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Crete, Greece ; Lars Juhl Jensen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Sarah Faulwetter, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research, Crete, Greece ; Sune Pletscher-Frankild, , University of Copenhagen, Denmark; Umer Zeeshan Ijaz (University of Glasgow, United Kingdom); Aikaterini Vasileiadou (University of Patras, Patras, Greece)
updates at Evangelos' blog
Questions regarding the EOL Rubenstein Fellows competition may be directed to the EOL Rubenstein Fellows Coordinator at hammockj at si.edu.
