Workshop: Biological Collections as a Resource for Technical Innovation

研讨会：生物收藏作为技术创新的资源

• 批准号: 1521072
• 负责人: Rolf Mueller
• 金额: $ 9.9万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2015-04-15 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1521072&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Workshop; Biological; Collections; Resource; Technical

Many natural history museums in the US and around the world harbor large and invaluable research collections of biological specimens. These collections form an archive of much of the world's known biodiversity. This archive is already used as an indispensable resource for many different purposes related to research in biology and conservation. This award will support a number of activities, including workshops that will explore a novel use of natural history collections as a resource for engineering innovation. The rationale behind this endeavor is that the world's biodiversity represents the outcomes of evolution, a process that shares many similarities with engineering optimization, but has been operating on a vast scale in terms of time, space, and the number of different species and individuals involved. Since no human engineering effort can come close to the time and spatial scales of biological evolution, biodiversity can be seen as a precious natural resource for optimizing knowledge that could have a major impact on technology development, finding solutions to major engineering challenges, and stimulating economic activity through innovation.To achieve its goal of starting a viable process towards utilizing natural history collection as a resource for innovation, the set of activities supported by this award will bring together researchers from very different backgrounds to plan a strategy for a path forward. The first year-long activity will start with preparatory meetings by a core team to carefully craft an agenda so that a large interdisciplinary workshop on the topic can be productive and result in tangible outcomes. After this main workshop, a team of authors will continue to meet and digest the results of the main workshop into two sets of publications, one set aimed at the scientific/engineering community and the other at the general public. The first set of publications will be aimed at giving scientists and engineers from diverse backgrounds specific suggestions as to how natural history collections could be leveraged for engineering innovation. These publication will also outline the pertinent challenges as well as potential solution strategies in as much technical detail as possible. The second set of publications will be aimed at providing policy makers and the general public a well-justified outline of the innovative and economic potential of natural history collections as well as estimates for the effort that would be required to realize this potential. The outcomes of the project will be archived on the website of the Center for Bioinspired Science and Technology at Virginia Tech (http://bist.centers.vt.edu).

美国和世界各地的许多自然历史博物馆都收藏了大量宝贵的生物标本。这些藏品构成了世界上大部分已知生物多样性的档案。这个档案已经被用作与生物学和保护研究有关的许多不同目的的不可或缺的资源。该奖项将支持一系列活动，包括探索自然历史收藏作为工程创新资源的新用途的研讨会。这一努力背后的基本原理是，世界上的生物多样性代表了进化的结果，这一过程与工程优化有许多相似之处，但在时间、空间和涉及的不同物种和个体的数量方面，一直在大规模地运作。由于人类的工程努力无法接近生物进化的时间和空间尺度，生物多样性可以被视为一种宝贵的自然资源，可以优化知识，对技术发展产生重大影响，找到重大工程挑战的解决方案，并通过创新刺激经济活动。为了实现启动一个将自然历史收藏作为创新资源的可行过程的目标，该奖项支持的一系列活动将汇集来自不同背景的研究人员，为未来的道路制定战略。第一个为期一年的活动将从一个核心小组的筹备会议开始，以仔细制定议程，以便就该主题举行一次大型跨学科讲习班，使其富有成效并产生切实成果。在这次主要研讨会之后，一组作者将继续会面并将主要研讨会的结果消化成两套出版物，一套针对科学/工程社区，另一套针对公众。第一套出版物的目的是为来自不同背景的科学家和工程师提供具体建议，说明如何利用自然历史收藏品进行工程创新。这些出版物还将尽可能详细地概述相关的挑战以及潜在的解决方案策略。第二套出版物的目的是向决策者和一般公众提供自然历史收藏的创新和经济潜力的合理概述，并估计实现这一潜力所需的努力。该项目的成果将被存档在弗吉尼亚理工大学生物科技中心的网站上（http://bist.centers.vt.edu）。