Climate and Sustainability Aug 10
Attending
- Jonathan Starr (NumFOCUS)
- Program manager for OSSci.
- Works under NumFOCUS.
- Pushing the OSSci initiative forward with 2 other team members.
- Tim Bonnemann
- Community lead for OSSci
- Started in October of last year at IBM Research.
- Located in San Jose, California, but currently visiting family in Germany.
- Aggie Branczyk
- Senior research scientist at IBM Quantum.
- Exploring use cases for quantum computing in sustainability at IBM Quantum.
- Abel Aoun
- Software engineer for Eumetsat in Damstadt, Germany.
- Interested in software engineering for open source.
- Contributed to NumPy, Xarray.
- Julian Aehlers
- Previously worked for Siemens Twinpower in the Control Engineering Department.
- Did work on wind turbine simulation and design software.
- Took a break for parenting, getting back into the field and seeing what’s going on.
- David Patton
- Physicist, data scientist, and has worked as a software developer.
- Located in Washington, D.C.
- Currently in the healthcare industry.
- Interested in filling gaps in the OS for science ecosystem
- James Munroe
- Works for 2I2C.
- Deals with open interactive computing in the cloud.
- Background in physical oceanography.
- Interested in enabling efficient big data set handling.
- Orion Cohen
- Graduate student at the University of California Berkeley.
- Works in computational material science, specifically on discovering new lithium-ion batteries and recyclable polymers.
- Interested as a user and developer of open user software tools in sustainability.
- Regularly frustrated at the maturity of the ecosystem and having to bake his own software.
- Wants to see scientists collaborate with industry and each other more effectively
- Mark Eyer
- IT professional at a high school in New Orleans.
- Undergraduate student at the University of New Orleans.
- Interested in open source software, open access, open science, and their applications in sustainability.
- Tina Lai
- Community bio-project leader at Genspace in New York City.
- Leading the Open Plant project.
- Interested in open source tools in the ag tech sector.
- Raimi Morufu Olalekan
- Lecturer in the Department of Environmental Management and Toxicology in Nigeria.
- Environmental health consultant with a focus on sustainability strategy, climate change, and health.
- Wants to use digital technology to change society for the better.
- Lloyd Treinish
- Atmospheric scientist at IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, New York.
- Works on weather and climate modeling and impacts of extreme weather events.
- Uses and contributes to open-source numerical models and tools for scientific data management, analysis, and visualization.
- Lisa Kempler (MathWorks)
- From MathWorks.
- Helps researchers, scientists, and educators use open platforms and develop open-source software related to MATLAB and data access.
- Tab Memmott
- Based in Oregon
- Sr. Research Software Engineer.
- Has been open science for a while now in the neurotech/cog neuro field and interested in getting more involved in sustainability.
- Alexy Khrabrov
- Director of OSSci at IBM research
Major Discussion Points:
General
- The challenges of incentivizing researchers to develop and sustain software, and the importance of bridging the gap between researchers and software developers.
- Hopes for collaborating on projects that would develop a more robust ecosystem for open science and contribute to making sustainability efforts more successful.
- The need for tools to optimize climate modeling for efficient plant growth.
- The importance of recognizing and incentivizing contributions to open-source projects in academic and job evaluations.
Expressing Drugs in Plants:
- Vision of producing medicines like insulin in plants.
- Discussion on the technological advancements and research necessary to make this vision a reality.
- Consideration of the benefits, such as reducing global healthcare costs and increasing accessibility.
- Potential of purifying drugs locally.
- Drawing parallels to the consumption of locally grown foods.
- Debating the feasibility of local pharmacies taking on the role of drug production.
- Effective and efficient production challenges.
- Delving into the processes involved in extraction, purification, and standardization to ensure safety and efficacy.
Climate, Farming, and Plant Modeling:
- Use of open-source software for optimized farming.
- Emphasis on software’s potential to transform agriculture and its ability to address climate change and sustainability challenges.
- Tools like PlantCV for plant imaging.
- How tools like these can revolutionize the way we understand plant growth, drug production potential, and address environmental challenges.
- Vertical farming prospects and its technological implications.
- Considering the energy usage, space efficiency, and scalability.
- Exploring the sustainability of indoor farming environments and the future of urban farming.
Open-Source Science & Accessibility:
- Difficulties in accessing methodologies and tools.
- The struggle in locating specific data and code.
- Discussing the broader implications for the scientific community when research is inaccessible.
- Abandoned projects and possible solutions.
- The recurring issue of projects left without updates, maintenance, or any direction.
- Strategies proposed to integrate with existing platforms and how community support could ensure longevity.
- Importance of a centralized platform for scientific tools.
- Comparisons drawn to other platforms, considering the unique needs of the scientific community.
- Debate on whether a more specialized platform than GitHub is necessary.
- The Map of Open Source Science: its purpose and direction.
- Exploring its real-time capabilities and the vision of it as a dynamic, interactive tool.
- Consideration of how this platform could address the ongoing challenges discussed.
Research, Software, and Development:
- Issues converting research code to usable software.
- Analyzing the gap between academic research standards and the needs of software development.
- Discussing the ongoing tension between academic research aims and software usability.
- Training researchers vs. having dedicated software developers.
- Differing viewpoints on this issue, considering the benefits and challenges of both approaches.
- Debating how the two groups can work in synergy rather than in silos.
- Funding and incentive challenges for research software development.
- Brainstorming potential solutions, considering both public and private funding sources.
- Discussions on the importance of recognizing software contributions in academia.
- Differences in motivations and approaches between scientists and developers.
Action items
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Introduce yourself on Discourse!
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Contribute to the Map of Open Source Science by identifying tools used in Climate & Sustainability research and materials science.
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Share links to projects similar to MOSS to avoid redundant efforts.
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Join the Google group for future notifications
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Add the Google Calendar
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Post any thoughts or ideas on the Discourse forum.
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Check the UI mockup of the Map of Open Source Science (MOSS)