News

EMODNET WG4 - EUBON Workshop: Mechanisms and guidelines to mobilize legacy biodiversity data

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The EMODNET WG4- EUBON Workshop took place during 8-9 June 2015 in HCMR, Heraklion (Gournes, Crete) .

The overall objective of EMODnet WP4 is to fill in the spatial and temporal gaps in EMODnet species occurrence data availability by implementing data archaeology and rescue activities. This is a two-part process of first identifying and locating data and then performing the steps required to merge them into a digital database, which further will be distributed through EurOBIS, and the EMODnet data portal.

During this first part, many old faunistic reports have been located which contain valuable occurrence data on marine species. The extraction of these data and their conversion into OBIS format (a Darwin Core extension), is a slow and manual process.

European Maritime Day - Ports and Coasts, gateways to maritime growth

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The European Maritime Day was held at the Athens Concert Hall on 28-29 May 2015 and was focused on Blue Growth. The official opening was on the 28th with welcoming speeches by the Mayor of  the city of Piraeus, and the alternate Ministers of Tourism, Ministry of Economy, Infrastructure, Maritime Affairs and Tourism. There were a lot of interesting sessions on coastal communities and Blue Society, risks and opportunities. Many discussions were held regarding the next generation of marine professionals. Stakeholders from higher education, research and business presented innovative marine training practices which could help address the mismatch between marine graduate programs and the needs of future employers.

EGI Conference 2015

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The European Grid Infrastructure (EGI) Conference 2015 was held in Lisbon, Portugal between 18-22 May, 2015, and was focused on Engaging the Research Community towards an Open Science Commons. Mrs Emmanouela Panteri from HCMR represented LifeWatchGreece in the EGI Conference 2015 where she presented the LifewatchGreece infrastructure and the Citizen Science projects related to LifewatchGreece.

Presentation 1: From construction to deployment of LifewatchGreece: The potential role of EGI-LW Competence Centre

11th Greek Symposium of Oceanography and Fisheries

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The LifewatchGreece team participated in the 11th Greek Symposium of Oceanography and Fisheries that took place in Lesvos island during 13 -17 May 2015.

The LifewatchGreece scientific coordinator, Dr Christos Arvanitidis, presented the progress and the current achievements of the Reserach Infrastructure. The full presentation can be found here. 

The 1st Scratchpads Workshop

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The 1st Scratchpads Workshop for Athens was held on May 11th and 12th at the Department of Biology, University of Athens. It was organized by the Zoological Museum of the University of Athens (ZMUA) and the LifeWatchGreece Infrastructure. Dr Dimitris Koureas was invited from the Natural History Museum in London, UK and under his guidance about 25 attendees of the workshop from Athens, Thessaloniki, Heraklio and even Denmark, utilized the infrastructure and tools of Scratchpads in order to create taxonomic and regional biodiversity sites.

Conference: Cave environments: present and past

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

During the International Scientific Congress “Cave environments: present and past” (25-26 April 2015, Custonaci, Sicily, Italy) Dr. V. Gerovasileiou, post-doc researcher in HCMR and data manager (marine biodiversity data) in LifeWatch Greece, presented “Evaluating marine cave biodiversity in the eastern Mediterranean Sea”.

In his contribution he discussed on the significance of the currently developing biodiversity informatics infrastructures (e.g. LifeWatch) to the publication of georeferenced, taxonomically updated marine biodiversity datasets.

The biodiversity data for eastern Mediterranean marine cave ecosystems will be uploaded in the LifewatchGreece database.

EMBOS Synthesis Meeting

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The EMBOS Synthesis Meeting was successfully held at HCMR-Crete, from 21 to 24 April 2015. This was the second data workshop that took place in HCMR, following the one of December 2014.

4th EMBO Workshop on Microbial Sulfur Metabolism

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The 4th EMBO Workshop on Microbial Sulfur Metabolism (http://events.embo.org/15-microbial/) was held in Helsingør (Denmark), from the 12th to the 15th of April 2015. Ms Christina Pavloudi, PhD candidate of the MARES Doctoral Training Programme and Data Manager in LifeWatch Greece (microbial diversity data) participated in the workshop and presented her work on sulfate-reducing bacteria in Mediterranean lagoons, with a comparison between different biogeographic areas.

The poster presentation can be found below.

6th Conference of the Mikrobiokosmos Society

Submitted by Eva Chatzinikolaou on

The 6th Conference of the Mikrobiokosmos Society (http://mikrobiokosmos6.aua.gr/en/node/2) was held in Athens (Greece) from the 3rd to the 5th of April 2015. Ms Christina Pavloudi, PhD candidate of the MARES Doctoral Training Programme and Data Manager in LifeWatch Greece (microbial diversity data) participated in the conference and presented a combination of classic biodiversity analyses with novel algorithms which extract environmental information from microbial sequences.

The poster presentation can be found below.

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