Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory to play central role addressing key questions in pla...(e-by-side with mathematicians and statis...)

But, emphasizes Dr. Stein, whose bioinformatics tools are widely used by genome scientists worldwide, the dimension that is lacking, and which the Collaborative seeks to address, concerns the forging of a functional community, within the discipline and extending to those in computer science, math and other fields, upon whose expertise plant science depends.

CSHL, through its Dolan DNA Learning Center (DNALC), will collaborate with the project team to embed outreach materials within the iPlant portal, thus tightly linking plant research and education. Such material will include video and audio podcasts to publicize the project and to provide students and teachers a window on the grand challenge development process.

The DNALC will work with plant researchers to develop video interviews and narrated animations that explain the conceptual background and historical development of each grand challenge. The culmination of which will spawn a nationwide program that will train 1,000 science teachers in how to utilize iPlant tools for student projects that support integrative and computational thinking.

Science education and public outreach typically begin well after a scientific revolution has settled down into what Thomas Kuhn called normal science. In this project, we want to directly involve students and teachers in this revolutionary period of plant research by providing them with educational interfaces into the same data used by iPlant scientists, stated David Micklos, Ph.D., Executive Director of the DNALC.

The iPlant Collaborative was formed after a call for proposals in 2006 from the NSFs Department of Biological Infrastructure. CSHL will host the Collaboratives inaugural meeting,
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