We have received the following notice, which may be of interest to some TDWG participants.

Best wishes,

Donald

*** Please disseminate widely to students at your institution ***

CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE SUMMER TRAINEESHIPS 2009

VIRTUAL DATA CENTER FOR BIODIVERSITY, EARTH, ECOLOGICAL, AND EVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE DATA

http://hackathon.nescent.org/Cyberinfrastructure_Summer_Traineeships_200 9

Summer traineeships are available for up to four students and postdocs interested in informatics as applied to scientific data ranging from the fields of biodiversity, ecology, and evolutionary biology. The program provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate, masters, and PhD students as well as postdocs to obtain hands-on experience writing and extending open-source software as part of a distributed collaborative software development team building a Virtual Data Center (VDC) that includes major data and metadata repositories in those fields.

Trainees accepted into the program will receive a stipend ($4,500), and with the exception of attending one meeting near the beginning and one near the end of the 3-month program period may work from their home, or home institution. Travel costs incurred in connection with the meetings will be reimbursed. Each student will have at least one dedicated mentor to show them the ropes and help them complete their project.

Initial project ideas are listed on the website. These range from validation of metadata and identifier resolution, to supporting LSID and semantic-web compliant PURLs for digital data objects, to implementing modern web-service APIs, to cataloging the diversity of metadata schemas. The project ideas are flexible and can be adjusted in scope to match the skills of the student. We also welcome novel project ideas that dovetail with student interests.

The traineeships are supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to a consortium of major repositories for biodiversity, earth and environmental, ecological, and evolutionary science. The consortium includes the LTER Network Office, the U.S. Geological Survey, NASA and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF), the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center(NESCent), and the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). It aims to develop the cyberinfrastructure and technologies necessary to build a Virtual Data Center (VDC) based on a network of existing and new physical repositories ("nodes") that interoperate using open standards and protocols. The network will enable discovery of as well as open, stable, and secure access to data in any of its member nodes.

TO APPLY: Students apply online. Instructions for applying are at the website (see "When you apply"), along with program rules and eligibility requirements. The 15-day application period for students opens on Monday March 30th and runs through Monday, April 13th, 2009.

INQUIRIES: vdc-twg {at} ecoinformatics {dot} org. We strongly encourage all interested students to get in touch with us with their ideas as early as possible.

Cyberinfrastructure Traineeships Website: http://hackathon.nescent.org/Cyberinfrastructure_Summer_Traineeships_200 9

2009 NESCent Phyloinformatics Summer of Code (NESCent's participation in the Google Summer of Code; managed separately; postdocs not eligible; ***student application period ends April 3rd***) http://hackathon.nescent.net/Phyloinformatics_Summer_of_Code_2009

To sign up for quarterly NESCent newsletters: http://www.nescent.org/about/contact.php

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Todd Vision and Hilmar Lapp National Evolutionary Synthesis Center http://nescent.org