[ecoinfo] REMINDER: Cyberinfrastructure Summer Traineeships 2009 -- Student Application Deadline is April 13, 2009

[Matt Jones]

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

CYBERINFRASTRUCTURE SUMMER TRAINEESHIPS 2009 -
REMINDER: Student Application Deadline is April 13, 2009

http://hackathon.nescent.org/Cyberinfrastructure_Summer_Traineeships_2009

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.

The application deadline for students (April 13, 2009) is approaching rapidly.

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
end on 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_2009

Regards,
Matt Jones on behalf of the VDC Technical working group
Matt Jones, Hilmar Lapp, Dave Veiglais, Mark Servilla, Ryan Scherle,
Todd Vision, and Duane Costa

-- 
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Matthew B. Jones
Director of Informatics Research and Development
National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS)
UC Santa Barbara
jones at nceas.ucsb.edu                       Ph: 1-907-523-1960
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/ecoinfo
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