The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation has just announced a Request for Ideas (RFI) about Data Intensive Science:

The increasing volume and complexity of scientific data are overwhelming current research practices, and create additional barriers to an already challenged science infrastructure, workforce and funding landscape. Many agencies and foundations are looking at ways to best combat the growing wave of challenges caused by today’s data deluge, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation’s RFI on Data Intensive Science is intended to add to this growing body of thinking. This RFI is being conducted in the open and for the benefit of anyone looking to navigate these areas.

 

We welcome your participation in this effort. The intention in 2011 is to create a focused strategy in data-intensive science that strongly complements funding by government agencies, other foundations and private industry. We are leaving the definition of “data-intensive science” open, except to say that it is not intended to encompass “big data” exclusively.

More about the Foundation’s view of “data intensive science”:

The Science program recognizes that most every discipline is experiencing a significant growth in the quantity and diversity of data it manages.  We explicitly use the word “intensive” to mean both extremely large amounts of data as well as extremely heterogeneous types of data.  The Science Program believes that there is value in tackling both the well documented “big data” challenges as well as those in the “long tail” of science data.

Submit your ideas — or vote/comment on ones submitted by peers — through a dedicated web portal the Foundation has established. This RFI will be open through September.

(Contributed by Erwin Gianchandani, CCC Director)