Our blog is where you'll find all our project updates, highlights and achievements, as well as other news and events related to iMENTORS
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‘Science 2.0’ describes the on-going evolution in the modus operandi of doing research and organising science. These changes in the dynamics of science and research are enabled by digital technologies and driven by the globalisation of the scientific community, as well as the need to address the Grand Challenges of our times. They have an impact on the entire research cycle, from the inception of research to its publication, as well as on the way in which this cycle is organised.
The goal of the consultation is to better understand the full societal potential of 'Science 2.0' as well as the desirability of any possible policy action.
The eI4Africa and iMENTORS partnerships are very pleased to welcome a new associated organisation to the eI4Africa/iMENTORS joint conference on the theme “e-Infrastructures for Africa: Gateways to the Future” that will take place on October 29, 2014, in Brussels, Belgium.
The AFRICA BUILD (http://africabuild.eu) is a Coordination Action aiming to support and develop advanced Centres of Excellence in health care, education and research in the African countries, through Information Technologies. This project is supported by the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7-ICT). AFRICA BUILD started 1st August 2011 and will run for a period of 36 months.
iMENTORS has opened its data to all unregistered usersin its last six months of operation. It is important that donors provide information about the aid they give. More important though is for the information to be publicly available in a way that people can easily understand. iMENTORS (www.imentors.eu) is the most comprehensive data map on ICT investments in Africa and contains data across a multitude of entities, classified as organisations, research infrastructures, fibre networks and projects.
According to an article published on the Guardian, when Jeremiah Heaton’s seven-year-old daughter Emily turned to him one night last winter and asked him if she would ever be a real princess, he was faced with a dilemma.
“I didn’t want to break her spirits, so I said ‘yes, absolutely,’ he told the Guardian by phone from his home in Abingdon, Virginia, this week. “At that point I had no idea how to make it happen, but I couldn’t let her down. She had such a serious tone. I knew it meant a lot to her.”
According to an article published on isgtw, Eric Chen, a 17-year-old senior at Canyon Crest Academy in San Diego, California, US, has won the trifecta of science competitions: the 2014 Intel Science Talent Search; the 2013 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology; and the grand prize in the international 2013 Google Science Fair. Prizes from Google included those from Science Fair partners CERN, LEGO, National Geographic, and Scientific American.
Louis Papaemmanuel, Project Director of iMENTORS, SU, presented iMENTORS at the IST-Africa Conference (06 - 09 May, Mauritius) during Session 8d: eInfrastructures (08 May). IST-Africa 2014 focused on the Role of ICT for Africa's Development and specifically on Applied ICT research in the areas of eHealth, Technology Enhanced Learning and ICT Skills, Digital Libraries, Open Source Software, eInfrastructures, Societal Implications of Technology and eGovernment.
iMENTORS (www.imentors.eu) is an interactive resource, the first of its kind, to contain information about all known e-infrastructures in Africa in the past five years. Launched for public use and input in July 2013 iMENTORS provides you with the necessary tool to visualise e-infrastructures and all related projects in Africa.
Louis Papaemmanuel explained how using iMENTORS and open aid data enhances the coherence of international aid. Data acquisition and validation will continue to progress until the end of the project. By the end of the project the interactive system will contain at least 80% of all e-infrastructure available in Africa.
The Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN) is happy to announce its fourth annual event “4thInternational Platform on Integrating Arab e-Infrastructure in a Global Environment – e-AGE 2014” that will take place on 10-11 December 2014 at Grand Hyatt Hotel, in Muscat, Oman. The platform will be hosted by The Research Council (TRC) of Oman and it will be held under the Patronage of His Highness Sayyid Taimur Bin As’ad Al Said.
Africa as a region and as individual countries, is slowly making a steady progress towards establishing national and Regional Research and Educational Networks (RRENs). Although still in its infancy compared to other world regions such as Europe where each country has an active National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs) with established regional networks such as TERENA, iMENTORS database provides evidence for tremendous progress over the past few years.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
According to an article published on ei4africa.eu, e-Infrastructures enable the integration of software, data, high performance computing and other resources that researchers might need into a single convenient Science Gateway (for example the African Science Gateway). Other resources include remote sensors that can gather real-time data in a variety of settings. It is entirely possible that a remote sensor could be mounted on a robot which could be remotely controlled to investigate and explore its environment.
Africa as a region and as individual countries, is slowly making a steady progress towards establishing national and Regional Research and Educational Networks (RRENs). Although still in its infancy compared to other world regions such as Europe where each country has an active National Research and Educational Networks (NRENs) with established regional networks such as TERENA, iMENTORS database provides evidence for tremendous progress over the past few years.
Image courtesy of Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
There are currently three RRENs in Africa namely; West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN), Ubuntu Alliance which consists of Eastern and Southern African countries, and the North African block which belongs to Arab States Research and Education Network (ASREN).
Overal, iMENTORS has mapped 23 individual NRENs, 13 of which are members of Ubuntu Alliance, 6 WACREN members and 4 ASREN members. Check out our map!
The iMENTORS project is in the process of mapping e-infrastructure data across the Sub-Sahara African region. Data captured by iMENTORS aims to support bi-regional research cooperation through interactive information search tools. Check out our map!
According to an article published on isgtw, the data deluge is coming. In fact, in many research disciplines it is already upon us. The era of ‘big data’ poses enormous challenges to researchers across almost all fields of endeavor, from natural scientists to humanities researchers and from citizens to policy makers. However, big data also presents a wealth of opportunities, especially in today’s global, interconnected world.
With scientific data output alone growing at a staggering 30% per year, it is vital that researchers come together to build the social and technical bridges required to enable open sharing of data. The organization charged with achieving this is the Research Data Alliance (RDA), which is supported by funding bodies from Australia, Europe, and the US. Having only recently celebrated its first anniversary, the RDA has already grown to include over 1,500 members. “The growth has been precipitous,” says Francine Berman, co-chair of the RDA Council. “Our community is expanding in both scope and numbers and our organization is evolving.”
Yannick Legré was recently appointed director of EGI.eu, which coordinates and manages the European Grid Infrastructure (EGI). iSGTW speaks to Legré about his vision for the organization, as well as the challenges it faces, ahead of next month’s EGI Community Forum in Helsinki, Finland.
You’ve been involved in grid computing in Europe for over a decade now. Could you tell the iSGTW readers about this?
I worked with the DataGrid project right from the beginning. My work was concerned with integrating the different components produced by the project and ensuring that they were appropriate for the communities served. I also started playing with the Globus toolkitback when it was still at version 1.1 or 1.2, so a very early stage.
According to an article published on Projects, the importance of international cooperation in science and technology is explicitly recognised in the European Union's Innovation Union flagship initiative and the proposals for Horizon 2020, the new EU funding programme for research and innovation.
Image courtesy of nongpimmy / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Many of the EU’s international partner countries are investing more and more in research and innovation, and cooperation is now vital if research is to reach its full potential. An active and more strategic international cooperation will also contribute to achieving the EU’s wider policy objectives, outlined in the funding programme’s launch documents.
A New International Strategy
According to an article published on My Science Work, today at CNRS headquarters in Paris, a launch event will be held for the first European Women Researchers Day. With the goal of staging events annually at institutions across Europe, the 2014 edition, offering workshops and networking opportunities, is being organized by the Mission for the Place of Women at the French CNRS, in collaboration with several partners. MyScienceWork supports this initiative in favor of women’s advancement in science and will be present to share the event via twitter (#EWRD).
The eI4Africa third workshop “Leveraging Science Gateways & Virtual Research Communities in African e-Science” is taking place on March 19, 2014 in Lagos, Nigeria. Organised by the West and Central African Research and Education Network (WACREN) and the UbuntuNet Alliance in collaboration with Sigma Orionis and all the eI4Africa consortium members, the workshop is co-hosted by the Center for Atmospheric Research (CAR), an activity centre of the Nigerian National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), and the Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative.
Authors are invited to submit 500 word abstracts for presentation at UbuntuNet-Connect 2014, the 7th Annual Conference of the UbuntuNet Alliance. The UbuntuNet-Connect series of conferences has been held for the past 6 years and is regarded as one of the premier conferences in Africa. This year the conference will take place from 11 to 12 November 2014 in Lusaka, Zambia and will be hosted by Zambia Research and Education Network (ZAMREN), the NREN of Zambia.
26-27 February 2014, Athens
NET4SOCIETY, the network of National Contact Points for research in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities is organising a transnational conference which will take place in Athens at the National Hellenic Research Foundation on 26 and 27 February 2014 on the occasion of the Greek EU Council presidency.
This project has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no 313203 
