MARBEFES & BioOcean5D BioBlitz

Marbefes Bioblitz

Sopot, Poland, 16–17 June 2023.

The aim of the MARBEFES & BioOcean5D BioBlitz is to gather as many biologists as possible for the identification of as many species as possibles and in in 24 hours in the seaside city park and coastal waters. From microbes and rotifers to fish and bats. Friday 16th is devoted to collections and observations, while Saturday 17th is the public event in the form of a scientific picnic.

Updates will be made on the MARBEFES project website.

ICYMARE Conference 2023

ICYMARE

Oldenburg, Germany, 18–22 September 2023.

The International Conference for YOUNG Marine Researchers ICYMARE is calling for Sessions!

After a successful in-person conference in Bremerhaven we are hoping to continue meeting you all in presence next year! ICYMARE 2023 will be taking place from the 18– 22 September at the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Germany. We invite you to apply as an advanced (Master or PhD) student with your field of marine research and expertise aiming to offer and share it as an ICYMARE topical session.

To ensure every host is aware of all relevant information and is empowered to accomplish all tasks prior, during and after the conference, ICYMARE offers a mandatory workshop for all session hosts. During this workshop you will be introduced to or updated on all relevant tasks, such as abstract handling and session moderation, for ICYMARE 2023 OLDENBURG. Please indicate your availability to one of the three date and time suggestions you will find in the session host form!

We are convinced this workshop will be a beneficial training for all of us to allow for a professional conference organised by and for early career researchers from all over the world! Of course, we will provide a certificate of workshop attendance for all session host! As an additional benefit, session hosts and one invited speaker for your session will be free of conference fees!

Does that sound like an exciting opportunity for you? Perfect! Please apply to moc.eramyci@tcartsba with your own session (alone or as a team of two) until 28 February 2023 by submitting the three following documents:

  1. The filled-in and digitally signed session host form, including a “Call for Abstracts” on your session topic to invite presenters from all over the world (max. 100 words – excl. session title)
  2. A motivation letter of max 1 page showing your experience on the proposed topic and why you want to become a session host
  3. Your most recent CV

SORTEE Conference 2023

SORTEE Conference 2023

Online, 17–18 October 2023.

SORTEE (Society for Open, Reliable, and Transparent Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) conferences are informative, fun and low-cost.

There will be multiple participatory events organised by SORTEE members (you can submit a proposal a few months before the conference – watch out for content submission announcements).

SORTEE wants to facilitate lively exchanges of ideas, and so the following three participatory event types are the heart of the conference:

  • Unconferences: Facilitated discussions of ideas for how to make ecology, evolutionary biology, and related disciplines more open, reliable, and transparent. Facilitation involves moderating the conversation with ideas and examples, but there are no formal presentations.
  • Hackathons: Group projects with well-defined goals (papers, techniques, software, protocols, organisations, etc.).
  • Workshops: Facilitators will teach tools for implementing open, reliable, and transparent practices.

SORTEE strongly encourages proposals for all contribution types from people at a wide range of career stages and from members of underrepresented groups.

For facilitated sessions (Workshops, Unconferences, and Hackathons), SORTEE welcomes proposals from small teams (as well as individuals). SORTEE encourages teams to include diverse perspectives, for instance with facilitators from different countries and balanced in terms of gender and career stage. Facilitation by early career researchers (students or early career postdocs) is warmly encouraged.

SORTEE encourages people with any questions about accessibility in the submission process or the events themselves to contact conf.sortee[@]gmail.com.

More information on the SORTEE website.

AZTI SUMMER SCHOOL 2023 ‘Innovative and practical tools for monitoring and assessing multiple human pressures affecting biodiversity in marine systems’

AZTI Summer School

San Sebastian, Spain, 5–7 June 2023.

In this edition of the AZTI Summer School, the topic proposed is “Innovative and practical tools for monitoring and assessing multiple human pressures affecting biodiversity in marine systems“. This year, the school is organised in the framework of several Horizon Europe projects:  GES4SEASOBAMA-NEXTBiOcean5DACTNOW and MARBEFES). LifeWatch ERIC is a partner in the latter.

The main objective of the AZTI Summer School is to present the innovative tools that are already practically used in monitoring the ocean, and the tools used to assess the cumulative effects of multiple pressures, as well as the status of the ocean and the ecosystem services it provides.

WHEN: 5, 6 and 7 June 2023
WHERE: Aquarium of San Sebastian (Spain)
LANGUAGE: English
PROGRAMME: HERE
SPEAKERS INFO: HERE

REGISTER: HERE

Early registration fee: 90,00 € (VAT included). Deadline: 20 April
Standard registration fee: 115,00 € (VAT included). From 21 April to 2 June

CSC Summer School in High-Performance Computing 2023

CSC Summer School

Espoo, Finland, 27 June – 6 July 2023.

CSC Summer School brings together undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in different disciplines of scientific computing from all over the world. The contents consist of lectures and hands-on training on parallel programming, code optimization and other necessary skills in development of scientific software.

General information

The school is aimed for graduate students working in various fields of science, e.g., chemistry, physics, life sciences, engineering or economics as well as Industrial R&D professionals. Also undergraduates as well as post-docs will find the school very useful.

The ten days of school are filled with codingsportsleisure activities and having good time together. It will be an experience you will never forget with the midnight sun in the Nordic night next to breathtaking wilderness!

The following topics will be covered: 

  • Basics of parallel programming using message-passing (MPI) and threading (OpenMP) paradigms
  • Programming GPUs with OpenMP and HIP
  • Efficient input/output using parallel I/O
  • More advanced topics in MPI
  • Hybrid parallel programming combining MPI, OpenMP, HIP
  • Building real-world HPC applications.
  • Brief introduction to Quantum Computing

The participants will get a certificate containing a recommendation to your home university to grant you 5 credits (ECTS) for the school.

You may also want to read CSC’s article with positive experiences from 2022: https://www.csc.fi/-/hpc-summer-school

Learning outcome

The goal is that it would be possible to build HPC expertise up to an intermediate/semi-advanced level during the school.

After the summer school participants will be able to:

  • Identify the most important parallel programming concepts
  • Construct simple parallel programs with C++/C or Fortran programming languages
  • Construct simple GPU programs
  • Recognize advanced parallel programming constructs
  • Read and modify scientific applications implemented in C++/C or Fortran and utilizing MPI, OpenMP and HIP

Prerequisites

  • Some skills to operate in a Unix environment
  • Basic knowledge of version control with Git
  • Participants are expected to have some experience in programming with C++/C or Fortran, and to be familiar with their basic concepts (e.g. variables, statements, control structures, subroutines, modules/classes). 

Accommodation

Accommodation takes place in double rooms with en-suite shower and toilet. Linen and towels will be provided. 

The Fee

The early bird fee for all ten days is 1650eur + VAT (24 %).

Starting from 15.3. Late price is 1750eur + VAT (24%). 
The fee is all-inclusive. It includes accommodation, four meals and two coffee breaks on most days, social events, printed course materials, instructed sport activities, refreshments, and transportation from downtown Helsinki and back.

Selection

The participants will be selected based on their background information. Notification about acceptance will be send within five business days after registration.

Deadline for registrations is 2.5.2023

Contact cristian-vasile.achim@csc.fi for course details or event-support@csc.fi for registration related questions. More information on CSC website.

DOORS Mobilisation and Mutual Learning Workshop

DOORS Workshop

Constanta, Romania, 6 April 2023.

The first round of the DOORS project’s Mobilisation and Mutual Learning (MML) workshops will kick off on April 6, 2023, in Constanta, Romania. The goal of the workshop is to bring together experts and users of marine products, to raise awareness and share knowledge and skills, using Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles.

Objectives of the workshop

  • To engage Black Sea citizens and stakeholders in highly participatory training and co-creation activities to ensure suitability of existing and future Research Infrastructure services to the Black Sea region;
  • To train researchers and companies on how to use existing specific services, tools, data, EU data aggregation infrastructures and services (e.g. EMODnet) and protocols offered by the European Marine Research Infrastructures, to make the most of existing data and monitoring initiatives that can feed into the Blue Economy and political decision making for the region;
  • To set in motion inclusive mechanisms for international sharing of knowledge, building common understanding and cocreating solutions to marine societal challenges and base them on the RRI principles and socio-technical approach.

Session Topics

Sessions include plenary expert talks, round table discussions and hand-on practical exercises to explore existing pan-European marine data infrastructures including:

  • The European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and how to navigate the marine products catalogue, identify relevant products for the specific users and how to use them.
  • The Marine Litter Watch (MLW), a citizen-based app that aims to help fill data gaps in beach litter monitoring.
  • DOORS Observation Mapping Tool which illustrates the main marine observing capacities and marine data infrastructures identified in the Black Sea.
  • The DOORS #BlackSeaLitterFree Campaign which raised awareness about marine litter, problems and solutions.
  • An introduction to the DOORS System of Systems (SoS), in a working beta version, demonstrating how to access marine data on the platform .

Introducing our System of Systems (SoS)

In DOORS, the foundation of our work will be our System of Systems (SoS) platform which will revolutionise how we handle, process and understand data from the entire region. One of our main goals is to harmonise scientific approaches for gathering data, integrating all existing data as well as new satellite data into a consolidated system that works for everyone.

Video: A short working demo of the System of Systems interface. © DOORS Black Sea

Register for the Event

This workshop is suitable for anyone responsible for collecting or managing marine environmental data in the public sector, industry for education or research. Please remember to share the event widely within your networks.

Symposium: Advanced facilities for the ecological research: the European Research Infrastructures

Metz, France, 24 November 2022.

The European Commission is strongly promoting the establishment and operation of European Research Infrastructures (ERIs), funded by the Member States, as key components of the scientific research landscape supporting the global competitiveness of European research communities. ERIs are aimed at offering high quality data and advanced facilities to European scientists, with particular attention towards early career researchers, promoting innovation, technology transfer to industries, and citizen engagement in science.

In the area of Ecology, some ERIs have already been established as European Research Infrastructure Consortia (ERIC), and are currently operational, whilst others are in the process of becoming so. Globally, the landscape of European Research Infrastructures offers monitoring sites and facilities covering all types of environmental domains, i.e., terrestrial, freshwater, transitional and marine waters and key research areas, such as those dealing with biodiversity organisation, conservation and restoration, with ecosystem processes and carbon sequestration, water and energy fluxes or with agroecosystems.

On 24 November 2022, LifeWatch ERIC is organising the Symposium: “Advanced facilities for the ecological research: the European Research Infrastructures”.
Here, we propose an expert panel discussion, with leading scientists from advanced ERIs supporting European scientific research on biodiversity and ecosystems, such as LifeWatch ERIC, the European e-Science Infrastructure for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, the ecosystem component of ICOS ERIC, the Integrated Carbon Observation System, eLTER RI, the Integrated European Long-Term Ecosystem, critical zone ad socio-ecological Research, DiSSCo, the Distributed System of Scientific Collections, Danubius-RI, the International Centre for Advanced Studies on River-Sea Systems, EMSO ERIC, the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water column Observatory, and JERICO-RI, the Joint European Infrastructure of Coastal Observatories. Presenting their key integrated research facilities to the SFE2 GFÖ EEF Joint Meeting – “Ecology & Evolution: New perspectives and societal challenges“, these infrastructures offer to the relevant ecological research community of practice, a view on their data, services and other types of research resources, on the opportunities for engagement and on the possibilities to propose new types of data and services to be promoted, collected and developed by the ERIs.

The proposed discussion will focus on the major scientific and societal challenges of contemporary times and on the greatest threats faced by biodiversity, ecosystem services and societal benefits, in the context of natural and anthropic pressures, including climate change impacts. The leading scientists involved in the discussion will present how each ERI will commit to collaboratively tackle these issues, supporting the creation of new multidisciplinary and cross-domain knowledge towards facilitation of the implementation of current policies at all levels and the creation of new ones. They will also illustrate how scientists can access their integrated research facilities.

Keynote speakers:
Alberto Basset, University of Salento and LifeWatch ERIC
Christos Arvanitidis, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) and LifeWatch ERIC
Dario Papale, University of Tuscia and ICOS ERIC
Michael Mirtl, Environment Agency Austria and eLTER RI
Niels Raes, Naturalis Biodiversity Center and DiSSCo
Adrian Stanica, National Institute for Research and Development of Marine Geology and Geoecology (GeoEcomar) and Danubius-RI
Gabriella Quaranta, EMSO ERIC
Laurent Delauney, Ifremer and JERICO-RI
Rob J.J. Hendriks, Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality and Biodiversa+

Chairperson: Andreas Petzold, Juelich Research Centre, IAGOS and ENVRI-FAIR

Speakers will present their RIs, then they will illustrate the services and facilities that these RIs can provide to address major threats for biodiversity (e.g. alien species, habitat degradation and fragmentation etc) and tackle climate change impacts affecting ecosystem functioning and services. The discussion will be therefore an occasion to highlight multidisciplinary expertise and synergies on these key topics.

Workshop: e-Tools & resources to address key questions on Non-indigenous & Invasive Species

Metz Workshop

Metz, France, 21 November 2022.

LifeWatch ERIC ICT staff, in collaboration with scientists already engaged in developing research activities on non-indigenous and invasive species using LifeWatch ERIC’s Virtual Research Environment facilities, is organising the 4-hour computer-based Workshop: “e-Tools and resources to address key ecological questions on Non-indigenous and Invasive Species” from 14:00-18:00 in Room 13.
Interested attendees will be trained to access and use the Virtual Research Environments from their personal computers. The hands-on session will be introduced by an interactive session to guide the attendees on their first approach to the VREs and related e-tools.

The workshop is organised in the framework of the SFE2-GfÖ-EEF joint meeting “Ecology & Evolution: New perspectives and societal challenges“, on 21-25 November 2022 in Metz. It is being organised by the LIEC (University of Lorraine, CNRS) and other labs in northeastern France working in the fields of ecology and evolution.

Click here for more information.

Workshop description
Non-indigenous and Invasive Species (NIS) are considered one of the major threats to the ecosystem functioning and one of the main drivers of biodiversity loss. Despite the advances in the understanding of introduction pathways, mechanisms of bio-invasions, and impacts of invasive species, the effective management and control of NIS still lag behind their spread.
For such reason, LifeWatch ERIC has developed e-science tools to assist researchers, stakeholders, and citizens in deepening knowledge and obtaining rapid responses to mitigate the risks and impacts of NIS in the terrestrial and aquatic domains.
This joint effort has resulted in the development of a series of ICT facilities and workflows to support scientists in running five case studies (CS) on NIS, tackling different key aspects, including:

  1. the evaluation of their trophic habits (CS 1);
  2. the early-detection of NIS invasion and spread, through standard monitoring procedures and metabarcoding (CS 2 & 3);
  3. the development of keystone NIS species dispersion scenarios for terrestrial Mediterranean ecosystems (CS 4);
  4. the EUNIS habitat and ecosystem vulnerability (CS 5).

The five case studies and workflows are embedded into Virtual Research Environments (VREs) that provide a series of web-services made available through a user-friendly interface and the datasets and services produced through the case studies are accessible through the LifeWatch ERIC catalogue.
 
The workshop aims at presenting the LifeWatch ERIC VREs and e-resources developed for NIS research. During the workshop, the scientific case study leaders, together with the LifeWatch ERIC ICT team, will introduce the aims and analytical tools (e.g. models, computing facilities) included in each workflow. The presentation of the case studies and web-services realised will be followed by a hands-on session where the attendees can access the VREs.
 
AGENDA
14:00-14:05: General introduction (10 mins)
Chairs:
Christos Arvanitidis – Chief Executive Officer, LifeWatch ERIC
Juan Miguel González-Aranda – Chief Technology Officer/ICT-Core Director, LifeWatch ERIC
Alberto Basset – Service Centre Director, LifeWatch ERIC

14:05-14:25: General introduction to Tesseract (15 mins)
LifeWatch ERIC ICT team presentation: Antonio José Sáenz-Albanés – LifeWatch ERIC
 
14:25-15:00: Case Study 1: Evaluation of NIS trophic habits – Crustaceans (35 mins)
Scientific leader presentation: Raffaele De Giorgi – University of Salento, LifeWatch ERIC Service Center
Hands-on session
Questions and discussion
 
15:00-15:35: Case Study 2: Early-detection of NIS invasion and spread through standard monitoring procedures and metabarcoding – ARMS (35 mins)
Scientific leader presentation: Katrina Exter – Flanders Marine Institute (VLIZ)
Hands-on session
Questions and discussion
 
15:35-16:10: Case Study 3: Development of keystone NIS species dispersion scenarios
for terrestrial Mediterranean ecosystems. – Ailanthus altissima (35 mins)

Scientific leader presentation: Carmela Marangi – Italian National Research Council (CNR), Institute for applied mathematics (IAC)
Hands-on session
Questions and discussion
 
16:10-16:30: Break (20 mins)
 
16:30-17:05: Case Study 4: The EUNIS habitat and ecosystem vulnerability. Biotope
(35 mins)

Scientific leader presentation: Julien Radoux (Catholic University of Louvain) and Heliana Teixeira (University of Aveiro)
Hands-on session
Questions and discussion
 
17:05-17: 40: LifeBlock (35 mins)
LifeWatch ERIC team presentation: Juan Miguel González-Aranda, Joaquín López-Lérida, and Ana Mellado-García (LifeWatch ERIC, ICT-Core)
Hands-on session
 
17:40-17:55: Essential Biodiversity Variables using Remote Sensing (15 mins)
Scientific leader presentation: Joris Timmermans – LifeWatch ERIC VLIC
Questions and discussion
 
17:55-18:00: Final Remarks and Conclusion (5 mins)

Mareamico’s 31st Conference of the Sea

Mareamico 2022

Gallipoli, Italy, 6–9 October 2022.

Following last year, Mareamico is bringing back the Conference of the Sea in 2022, reaching its 31st edition, held in Gallipoli at the Galleria dei due mari from 6–9 October 2022. The theme this year will be SAFEGUARDING BIOLOGICAL RESOURCES AND THE BLUE ECONOMY.

Among the issues that will be discussed at Mareamico 2022 are the management and recognition of the value of these resources, both by experts (including Professor Alberto Basset, director of the LifeWatch ERIC Service Centre), and local and national institutional and political representatives.

For more information and the programme, please visit the Mareamico website (in Italian).

Science Summit at UNGA77

SSUNGA77

Hybrid, New York/Online, 13–30 September 2022.

ISC is organising the 8th edition of the UNGA77 Science Summit around the 77th United Nations General Assembly (SSUNGA77) in September 2022. This is a hybrid event with some sessions being held in New York and others online.

LifeWatch ERIC will be convening a Biodiversity Plenary with GBIF on Friday 16 September from 15:00–23:30 CEST; see our news item for more details.

The role and contribution of science to attaining the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will be the central theme of this conference. The objective is to develop and launch science collaboration to demonstrate global science mechanisms and activities to support the attainment of the UN SDGs, Agenda 2030 and Local203o.

A central theme of the UNGA77 Science Summit will be inclusiveness: a range of discussions will explore how scientific excellence can be pursued based on inclusiveness at the global level. Another theme will be exploring at the science system works: policies, regulation and funding for science stem from deep in the last century. The pandemic provides a chance to rethink and co-design a new system for science for a new set of urgent challenges. A redesign of the global science system is urgent.

A call for session proposals has been published here.

Science infrastructures and digital research capacity building are crucial to enable scientists to collaborate at an international level to create opportunities for wide-ranging initiatives that can produce innovations to respond to challenges in health, climate, environment, energy, agriculture and food, amongst other things.