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virtual Seminar/Symposium

In this talk, we will review how to kickstart and develop innovative STEM projects from an academic open source community building perspective. This includes the tools, organizational affordances, and outcomes that result from this approach. Centered upon students and virtual infrastructure, academic open source-based curricula allow us to integrate research, education, and adversarial problem-solving to achieve STEM innovation.

Zoom Link

Abstract:

In this talk, we will review how to kickstart and develop innovative STEM projects from an academic open source community building perspective. This includes the tools, organizational affordances, and outcomes that result from this approach. Centered upon students and virtual infrastructure, academic open source-based curricula allow us to integrate research, education, and adversarial problem-solving to achieve STEM innovation. As we will see, STEM innovation fostered by this approach can be a participatory endeavor with a low barrier to entry. Challenges to the academic open source community building approach include project foundations, recruitment and retention, and momentum through maintenance. The big picture will reveal several points of intersection between privacy and open source software development that can be addressed using this approach. We will conclude by reviewing future opportunities for participatory and institutional academic open source community building.

 

Biosketch:

Bradly Alicea has a PhD from Michigan State University. He has published in multiple academic fields, and in venues including Nature Reviews Neuroscience, eLife, Neuroinformatics, Stem Cells and Development, Biosystems, and Artificial Life. Bradly’s academic and instructional interests spanning the biological, computational, and social science. His open source endeavors have included being the Head Scientist and Founder of Orthogonal Research (http://orthogonal- research.weebly.com), a Senior Contributor at the OpenWorm Foundation (http://openworm.org), and managing of open-source community activities at the Rokwire Initiative (http://rokwire.org). Please see Bradly’s personal website (http://bradly-alicea.weebly.com) for more information.