How to Engage

How to Engage the iPlant Collaborative

There are several routes for community members to engage in the iPlant Collaborative’s efforts, depending on your level of interest and available time.  These include Grand Challenge Workshops, white papers, teams and working groups, the Scientific Opportunities Team, or as a Board member.

Grand Challenge Workshops

First, plant science and computational science community members can propose a Grand Challenge Workshop to discuss and identify new Grand Challenges.  Each workshop proposal is reviewed by the iPlant Board of Directors and then a recommendation is made to the iPlant Executive Team. Typically, a workshop is a 3-4 day-long event involving about 40 community participants and 10-20 iPlant project members, with the goal of identifying a tractable Grand Challenge problem and developing concensus, on at least a conceptual level, of the cyberinfrastructure (CI) needed to solve it.

Grand Challenge White Papers

Alternatively, if a Grand Challenge problem and conceptual CI are already fairly clear to an appropriately diverse group of community members, a Grand Challenge Project “white paper” can be submitted to the iPlant team without the need to first hold a Workshop.  Like Grand Challenge Workshops, Grand Challenge Project white papers are reviewed by the iPlant Board of Directors, who then make recommendations to the iPlant team.

Grand Challenge Teams

Another way to engage the iPlant Collaborative is through iPlant Grand Challenge Teams.  The two current Grand Challenge Teams are composed of several working groups, each focused on specific areas of cyberinfrastructure design and development.  These working groups are described on the iPlant website. Plant biologists or computer scientists interested in a specific working group effort should contact the working group leader or iPlant's Project Director, Steve Goff, for additional information on how to participate in that group.

Scientific Opportunities Team

To facilitate opportunities to extend the cyberinfrastructure being developed into new Grand Challenge projects, a Scientific Opportunites Team (SOT) was established and is a community-driven effort here.  The SOT is responsible for planning iPlant’s Year 3 Conference to update the community on the various cyberinfrastructure development efforts being undertaken.  At that time, community members will be encouraged to suggest or propose new Grand Challenge projects that can be addressed by the adoption of existing cyberinfrastructure and/or the addition of novel modular components.   This conference is intended to be an opportunity to engage iPlant on new Grand Challenge projects, without the hurdle of proposing a workshop or white paper.

Board of Directors

Finally, community members from the plant biology or computational science areas are encouraged to participate in the iPlant Board of Directors.  See here for more information on the Board of Directors’ role and responsibilities.