|
Greetings,
October marked an exciting milestone for NEON with the launch of our first NEON Convergence Summit, held October 15–17 in Boulder, Colorado. The Summit brought together more than 75 researchers, industry professionals, NEON Ambassadors, and NEON staff to explore bold, interdisciplinary approaches to advancing continental-scale biology using NEON data, samples, and infrastructure.
NEON was designed to enable continental-scale biology, and the complexity of this challenge demands more than data—it requires new ideas, tools, and collaborative innovation. The energy and creativity of the participants led to the formation of 12 working groups, each focused on producing impactful products such as manuscripts, proposals, code, training materials, and white papers. NEON will continue to support these groups through a series of virtual working sessions in the coming months, and we look forward to sharing their progress with you.
In parallel, NEON with its partner, the Imageomics Institute at OSU, is proud to support the NSF Harnessing the Data Revolution (HDR) Machine Learning Challenge, now in its second year. This challenge presents three scientific benchmarks focused on modeling out-of-distribution data in critical domains—Neural Forecasting, Ecological Predictive Modeling and Coastal Flooding Prediction.
These push the boundaries of machine learning by asking models to extrapolate beyond their training data—an essential step toward solving real-world scientific problems. To further support the Challenge, the Imageomics Institute, the Environmental Data Science Innovation & Impact Lab, CyVerse and NEON staff will hold a hackathon supporting the Ecological Predictive Modeling sub-challenge in Boulder in December. Look for more details on our website in the coming weeks.
We are excited by the momentum generated across these initiatives and grateful to all who are contributing their expertise and creativity! Together, we are building the foundation for transformative science at continental scales.
Sincerely,
Paula Mabee,
Chief Scientist and Observatory Director at NEON, Battelle
|
