We seek a senior Drupal developer for a 3-year (full-time) position as part of a major collaborative effort to help researchers share and manage biodiversity data on the web (http://scratchpads.eu/). The work will include design and implementation of web applications, web services, data schemas and other applications and services. 

We seek an up and coming junior Drupal developer for a 3-year (full-time) position, as part of a major collaborative effort to help researchers share and manage biodiversity data on the web (http://scratchpads.eu/). The role encompasses the development of content, theming and functionality for new and existing PHP and Drupal systems and applications. 

Last night I attended a Policy Lab event at the Royals Society examining intellectual property in Science. The meeting discussed a report entitled “Who owns Science” produced by the Institute of Science, Ethics and Innovation at Manchester University. Speakers included John Alty, Chief Executive of the UK’s intellectual property office; Adam Heathfield, director of science policy for Europe at Pfizer; Charles Leadbeater, author of “We Think” and former advisor to Tony Blair; and Sir John Sulston, who amongst many things is chair of the Institute of Science, Ethics and Innovation at Manchester. I must confess that from the outset I was sceptical about the value of this meeting – at least to me personally, and for its value addressing the issues that a majority of my colleagues face when dealing with intellectual property. After seeing the press this morning I think at least some of that scepticism was justified.

For the past 6 months I've been busy putting together a 141 page application to the EU's FP7 research infrastructures program. Specifically INFRA-2010-1.2.3: Virtual Research Communities. I am pleased to say the application has been successful and we have been awarded 4.75M Euros in support of the project. ViBRANT (Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy) is about integrating several major EU funded infrastructures to construct a Virtual Research Environment (VRE) for the taxonomic and systematic community. ViBRANT builds on the Scratchpad project, and is a partnership of 17 institutions that have a proven track record of delivering the social and technical components necessary to deliver this system. 

I am sad to report that Nigel Hill, Medical Entomologist at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine died on the 5th January, 2010. The news is especially distressing given the recent death of Bob Dalgleish. Nigel worked on a wide range of insect pests including head lice. In particular, Nigel lead much of the recent research on the status of insecticide resistance in UK head louse populations. The news was passed on the me through Joanna Ibarra of Community Hygiene Concern who has written the following obituary which I copy here with her permission.

It is with great sadness that I have to note the passing of my friend and colleague Bob Dalgleish, who died suddenly on December 7th in San Diego following one of his many travels. Bob was a central figure in the Phthiraptera (louse) research community, first and foremost as a taxonomist, but also as a leader and organiser or international efforts to promote research on lice and taxonomy. Bob (with Steve Barker) was central to restarting the regular International Congress on Phthiraptera (ICP), more fondly known to us as the louse meetings, and helped establish the International Society of Phthirapterists to which he was eventually elected President.

At long last we (the Scratchpad team) have got around to publishing a formal paper on the Scratchpads. There are several short notes and conference proceedings published about the work we have been doing, but this is the first technical paper that describes in details the overall architecture of the project and sets out the sociological model of what we are trying to achieve. The paper will appear as one of nine papers selected for a special series sponsored by the Encyclopedia of Life project, for the journal BMC Bioinformatics. BMC, with the help of the special issue editor Neil Sarkar, selected the Scratchpad paper to highlight the publication in a press release entitled "Darwin meets Facebook". You can find a copy of the press release attached to the bottom of this page.

For the past few weeks Dave Roberts and I have been beavering away on a major EU FP7 grant. The abbreviated name for our application is ViBRANT which is the catchier name for "Virtual Biodiversity Research and Access Network for Taxonomy". The competitive nature of this call makes it difficult for me to say much about what we are planning or who is involved, suffice to say that the project is to extend and distribute the Scratchpads and integrate the activities of various other major European work programs including GBIF, PESI and the publisher of the journal Zookeys.