Friday, June 6, 2008

Global Plant Sciences Initiative - Paying the Bills

While many grad students get stuck with crappy jobs of servitude in order to obtain their PhD, I get to have fun. Even though I’m an Environmental and Natural Resource Sciences PhD student my special and apparently much sought after skills in CMS development has afforded me the opportunity to break out of the mold and do something other than push loads of paper work. Instead I will be the lead developer for the new Global Plant Sciences Initiative web site that will serve as the front face for the GPSI and act as a collaborative space for experts in plant sciences, biotech, biofuel, ag sciences and other disciplines from around the world.

What is this, you ask! Well, the GPSI is a project aimed at bringing all of these disciplines together in order to identify socially, economically and environmentally friendly solutions to energy and food production around the world. It will also serve as a space for graduate students to add to existing knowledge and contribute to the research and global conversation regarding this very important issue.

My part in this grand scheme will be to build the site, provide add-on tools to the base SharePoint package, develop the site architecture including the underling ontologies for linking knowledge with people, projects and institutions. Once this is complete I will be maintaining the site, training staff and graduate students on effective means for utilizing the site.

The site shell will be up by Monday afternoon as I’m working on the prototype throughout the weekend. I'll post the new URL once I have something worth showing

Collaborators in this project include:
WSU – (which include the depts….)

  • Molecular Plant Sciences

  • School of Economic Sciences

  • Civil and Environmental Engineering

  • Plant Pathology

  • Horticulture

  • Mathematics

  • Crops and Soil Sciences

  • Institute of Biological Chemistry

  • School of Biological Sciences

  • Center for Teaching Learning and Technology

Also, the USDA and the University of Washington

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

wow. well done. looks like a nice - and big - job! too bad you have to base it on SharePoint :)

Unknown said...

Ya, well SharePoint is the thing here at WSU. But I would love to make Microsoft and Google play nice together. Wouldn't that be a trip?! A SharePoint/Google App Mashup. The neat thing about the project is that the group s very keen on doing cutting edge stuff so we'll see what we can develop over the next 18 months.

Anonymous said...

Is the GPSI website up yet?