The Quantitative Life Sciences Initiative partnered with UNL’s Holland Computing Center and Center for Plant Science Innovation and the Midwest Big Data Hub to highlight current research and work in life sciences, plant sciences, and digital agriculture. Events included a retreat, symposium, conference and workshop.
Supercomputing and Life Sciences Symposium, March 2018, Wick Alumni Center, Lincoln, Ne
The Holland Computing Center and the Quantitative Life Sciences Initiative partnered to host the 2018 Supercomputing and Life Sciences (SLS) Symposium, bringing speakers on computational sciences from across the nation and within the NU system with topics in high-performance computing and quantitative life sciences research attracting computational as well as life science faculty and students in a broad range of STEM fields. The symposium featured experts from CyVerse, Internet2 and Center for the Advancement of Data and Research in Economics as well as posters covering research relevant to the QLSI mission and/or benefiting from advance computing (e.g. use of HCC, the Open Science Grid or XSEDE resources).
https://hcc.unl.edu/SLS-Symposium-2018#present_info
Midwest Big Data Hub Digital Agriculture All Hands Meeting/UAS Workshop, September 2018, UNL East Campus Union, ENREC, Mead, Ne
The meeting, established by the Midwest Big Data Hub Digital Agriculture Community, a growing network devoted to building partnerships and resources to address emerging issues in precision agriculture, ecosystem management and services, biosciences, socio-economic impacts, and data-related issues in the agricultural ecosystem, focused on the methodologies and technologies that enable Digital Agriculture, the associated data challenges, and the resulting insights into complex agricultural and agroecological systems.
Several ongoing projects among biologists, engineers, computer scientists, and allies encompassed UAS systems, plant sciences, and the future of education in agriculture. These projects emphasized how we collect and organize data, how we process it, and how we use it to develop statistical and conceptual frameworks to understand complexity in agricultural systems, from molecular to ecological scales.
Keynotes included Lisa Harper, Plant Geneticist, USDA ARS: AgBioData Consortium and James Wilgenbusch, Senior Associate Director Minnesota Supercomputing Institute Office of the Vice President for Research University of Minnesota: G.E.M.S. platform for agricultural data management.
In addition to the meeting, a one-day, hands-on ‘Flight to Maps: workshop on unmanned aircraft remote sensing’ and the use of UAS systems, basic data acquisition and processing was held at the Eastern Nebraska Research and Extension Center (ENREC) near Mead, Nebraska.
Led by Wayne Woldt, Ph.D., P.E., Extension Specialist - Unmanned Aircraft Near Earth Remote Sensing, Director – NU-AIRE Unmanned Aircraft Innovation, Research and Education Laboratory, Biological Systems Engineering and School of Natural Resources
Jacob Smith, Flight Operations Director,N U-AIRE Unmanned Aircraft Innovation, Research and Education Laboratory,Biological Systems Engineering
Mitch Maguire, Graduate Research Assistant, NU-AIRE Unmanned Aircraft Innovation, Research and Education Laboratory, Biological Systems Engineering
https://bigdata.unl.edu/midwest-big-data-hub-digital-ag-all-hands-meeting
UNL Plant Science Retreat, Oct 2018, Lied Lodge and Conference Center, Nebraska City, Ne
Supported in part by the initiative, the event is a biennial event for members of the University of Nebraska Plant Science Community, giving them a forum to hear and discuss the latest in Plant Science research. This retreat is sponsored by the Center for Plant Science Innovation, with funding from UNL departments and additional sources. Keynote speakers included Dr. Nirav Merchant, Director, University of Arizona, Data Science Institute, “Learning (for all of us) in the machine learning era”, Dr. Hasan Otu, Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, “Network analysis of multiomic data using probabilistic graph representations” and Dr. Eric Deeds, Associate Professor, University of Kansas, “The Evolution of crosstalk in signaling networks”