The Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) has issued a call for nominations for the 2017 Young Researchers Award. The GBIF Young Researchers Awards is an annual programme aimed at fostering innovative research and discovery in biodiversity informatics. Working closely with GBIF national Participants, the 2017 awards will provide €5,000 prizes recognising the work of two graduate students—one a master’s candidate and one a Ph.D. candidate—nominated by GBIF Participant countries. The National Biodiversity Data Centre serves as Ireland’s GBIF Node.
In previous years, the Young Researchers Awards have sought to encourage innovative uses of biodiversity data mobilised through the GBIF network. Building on recent updates to the Darwin Core standard that powers GBIF, the 2017 awards will recognise the best proposals to mobilise and share new sampling-event datasets through GBIF.org.
These fundamental datasets from ecological researchers contain key information on the presence or absence and abundance of species, and provide the richest resource for modeling biodiversity patterns and for detecting changes and trends in populations. They provide a critical tool for understanding the prospect and pace of widespread global change.
To demonstrate the potential value of sharing such ‘sampling-event datasets’, GBIF will present the 2017 Young Researchers Awards to recognise excellent examples of structured datasets derived from the applicants’ ecological research activities and published to the GBIF network. A jury comprised of representatives from the GBIF network, GBIF Science Committee and ecology-data experts will evaluate submitted datasets based on the completeness and quality of the data and associated descriptive metadata.
Students interested in being nominated must submit their applications to Dr. Liam Lysaght, Head of Delegation for Ireland by 17:00hrs on Friday 30th June, 2017. Nominations should be emailed to llysaght@biodiversityireland.ie
The winners will be announced at the 24th GBIF Governing Board meeting, taking place in Helsinki, Finland in September 2017.
The 2017 GBIF Young Researchers Award is funded by SBNO: Stichting ter Bevordering van Natuurwetenschappelijk Onderzoek, with in-kind support from Pensoft Publishers through waiving of publication charges.
Full details of the award and how to apply can be obtained from this following link:
http://www.gbif.org/newsroom/news/2017-young-researchers-awards-call-for-nominations