BC Environmental and Occupational Health Research Network

Space-related activities are often complex and involve a variety of disciplines. Experience shows that research outcomes benefit greatly from or are strengthened by collaboration amongst research and engineering teams. In addition, stronger competition at the international level and pressure on resources require that organizations collaborate with each other to build together a critical mass of world-class researchers. Networks, teams and clusters have been formed in Canada in the past through scientific collaboration, data sharing or technology development, amongst other activities. These initiatives should be further encouraged or sustained to face future challenges and trends in the space sector.

A new international competition called the Digging into Data Challenge was announced by four leading research agencies: the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) from the United Kingdom, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) from the United States, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) from Canada. The Digging into Data Challenge encourages humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis, challenging scholars to develop international partnerships and explore vast digital resources, including electronic repositories of books, newspapers, and photographs to identify new opportunities for scholarship. Applicants will form international teams from at least two of the participating countries. Winning teams will receive grants from two or more of the funding agencies and, one year later, will be invited to present their work at a special conference. These teams, which may be composed of scholars and scientists, will be asked to demonstrate how data mining and data analysis tools currently used in the sciences can improve humanities and social science scholarship. The hope of this competition is that these projects will serve as exemplars to the field and encourage new, international partnerships among scholars, computer scientists, information scientists, librarians, and others.

The CCSIP Steering Committee, together with the University of California, participating Canadian universities and ISTPCanada, has launched a university-led Call for Proposals for Collaborative Initiatives between Canada and California. These organizations are allocating US$2 million to this CFP to stimulate novel ideas, and catalyze the development of innovative multi–campus and multi–disciplinary research and educational collaborations between the two jurisdictions. The Call will be jointly managed by the University of California Office of the President (UCOP) and International Science and Technology Partnerships Canada (ISTPCanada).