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NSF Program Award Abstract #1829585 in support of using cyberinfrastructure to address challenges in research training, education and workforce development
Project Title: Collaborative Research: CYBER Training: CIU: Data Streams, Model Workflows, and Educational Pipelines for Hydrologic Sciences
Studies of water and environmental systems are becoming increasingly complex and require integration of knowledge across multiple domains. At the same time, technological advances have enabled the collection of massive quantities of data for studying earth system changes. Fully leveraging these datasets and software tools requires fundamentally new approaches in the way researchers store, access and process data. The project serves the national interest by motivating a culture shift within the hydrologic and more broadly earth science communities toward open and reproducible software practices that will enhance interdisciplinary collaboration and increase capacity for addressing complex science challenges around the availability, risks and use of water. Project's CyberTraining approach provides virtual learning experiences throughout an academic year, with online learning modules oriented around a one-week in-person workshop (WaterHackWeek) that will focus on hands-on real-world research projects. These research projects are designed to serve the national interest by preparing for natural hazards such as floods, hurricanes and climate change, and to advance the nation's health by making tools and data accessible to health researchers, local governments, and citizens.
Here is our Theory of Action - a roadmap for our activities and how we demonstrate change towards meeting our collective long term goals: Waterhackweek Theory of Action
New cyberinfrastructure that emphasizes data sharing and open, reproducible software practices is currently in development, but requires a mode of knowledge transfer, or CyberTraining, that extends beyond currently available university curriculum. Our aim is to ensure successful use of community cyberinfrastructure to 1) publish large datasets, 2) run numerical models, 3) organize collaborative research projects, and 4) meet journal requirements to follow open data standards. Our activities take advantage of HydroShare, a National Science Foundation funded cyberinfrastructure platform, operated by the Consortium of Universities Allied for Hydrologic Sciences (CUAHSI), for sharing hydrologic data and models. Our short-term goals are to develop new CyberTraining modules; our long-term goals are to have an annually recurring WaterHackWeek, to distribute curriculum CUAHSI to more than 130+ member universities, and advance cyberinfrastructure education for the broader geoscience community. The use of the hackweek educational model extends the use of cyberinfrastructure to promote the progress of science by including a specific emphasis on graduate student training as instructors, training coordinators, and building research networks with data providers who are stakeholders outside of academia. This project allows us to test the educational model in the water research community, in addition to connecting our research and curriculum to annually recurring hackweeks in neuro, astro, ocean, and geo-sciences (since 2014). Our team of researchers is actively engaged in experimenting with this new model, and in testing its efficacy through robust evaluation metrics. The proposed activities encourage collaboration and support for use of cyberinfrastructure at all stages of the educational pipeline and provides participants with opportunities for networking, career development, community building and design of open-source software tools.