June 2020 Community News
In this issue:
- Data Labs Summer Update
- Ready to Use Datasets for Educational Activities
- NSF Letter on Data Proposals
- Virtual OceanHackWeek 2020
Data Labs Summer Update
It’s been a while since our last note, but like all of you, we’ve been busy!
Over the past 3 months, the Data Labs team, in partnership with Rutgers RIOS and with the support of NSF, quickly organized a virtual REU for students who otherwise would have missed out on a research experience this summer.
Fifteen students recently completed our jam-packed 2-week professional development workshop, and the group presentations were amazing! The students are now working on a 6-week research project with mentors from our community (many using OOI datasets), and we can’t wait to see what they come up with. (More soon!)
In addition to the REU, our Data Labs Fellows are working on their projects, the Lab Notebook team is refining their activities, and the last few widgets from our development workshops are in the works. Janice and Sage also presented an update to the OOIFB, and we’ve added a number of python examples to our blog.
Which is to say, there’s a lot going on and we will have a lot more news, resources and webinars coming out soon, so stay tuned!
Speaking of new resources…
Ready to Use Datasets for Educational Activities
A new resource of curated OOI datasets is now available.
Check out our new OOI Data Nuggets!
OOI Data Nuggets are exemplary datasets curated from data collected by the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Datasets were selected based on their quality and alignment with a broader OOI Science Theme. The nuggets explore various concepts common in upper-level high school and introductory college courses and are designed and packaged to be readily accessible to educators to integrate into their existing curriculum.
The creation of these Data Nuggets was part of the NSF-funded OOI Synthesis & Education project conducted by Rutgers University and led by the Consortium for Ocean Leadership.
NSF Letter on Data Proposals
On April 23, NSF Ocean Sciences sent a letter to the community regarding Upcoming Proposals to OCE, Shiptime and Data Proposals.
The following snippet caught our eye, and we wanted to make sure you saw it too.
“In addition, we want to remind the community that NSF OCE is, as always, interested in receiving proposals that use existing data and samples. … Proposals with strong science that synthesize and utilize these data are welcome. Ongoing streams of data are also available from sources such as OOI, Argo, coastal observing networks, LTER sites, remote sensing, model output, and others.”
It’s great to see this call for data-focused proposals. With so much data “on the shelf” from OOI and other observing systems, there’s certainly no shortage of data to analyze. And this is a great lesson for students too… You don’t need a large research project to do good science. You just need some good data.
Virtual OceanHackWeek 2020
OceanHackWeek is a small hands-on, interactive virtual workshop focused on data science and oceanography that will be held during August 10-14, 2020. The workshop features five days of tutorials, data exploration, software development and community networking. If you’re a Data Labs community member interested in expanding your programming knowledge and collaborative network, we think this event might be perfect for you.
The application deadline is July 13, 2020.
For more information, visit their website at https://oceanhackweek.github.io
