NIF Webinar - February 7, 2012 at 11:00 PST

Hello everyone,

The next NIF Webinar will be held on Tuesday, February 7, 2012 at 11:00 am PST.   Please join Carlo Quinonez as he discusses Open Hardware in Science: Benefits and Challenges.

The following is a description of the webinar:

The need for free and easy access to scientific data and other information essential to scientific experiments has been clearly recognized for decades. Developments such as open source software, open data, open access journals and open courseware rely on the easy and efficient transfer of information over the Internet. However, the dissemination and collaborative development of open hardware for the benefit of scientific progress poses unique challenges and opportunities. The widespread prevalence of scientist-developed tools has been driven by commercial instruments' lack of flexibility and detailed engineering data vital for user-improvements. While these technologies are put to good use by their developers, practical issues such as poor documentation, difficulty of fabrication, and idiosyncratic operation typically limit the utility to broader research community. In this webinar we will discuss the open hardware toolset, Aquinas, that addresses some of these issues and provides a shared hardware platform for biological experimentation. Currently, several micro-fluidics designs are available for fabrication. The facile reproduction of scientist-developed tools improves the reproducibility and transparency of science overall. Furthermore, a shared hardware platform for biological experimentation would also propel large-scale collaborative efforts to significantly accelerate the discovery of cures and scientific breakthroughs.

Date and Time: Tuesday, February 7, 2011 • 11:00-12:00 PST
Topic: OpenHardware in Science: Benefits and Challenges
Presenter: Carlo Quinonez, Ph.D., IRACDA Fellow in the Department of Pharmacology, University of California, San Diego.
URL: http://connect.neuinfo.org/webinar
Dial-In (toll-free): 866-740-1260
Access Code: 8220739

Mark your calendars! See you there.

The Neuroscience Information Framework (NIF) hosts a semi-regular Tuesday Webinar series on topics focused on collaborating with NIF, getting involved in building the NIF vocabulary, using NIF portal resources, as well as other appropriate NIF topics.

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NIF Communications Team
UC San Diego
3rd Floor, Atkinson Hall
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La Jolla, California 92093

858-822-0755
http://www.neuinfo.org