"Open Science: Accelerating the Pace of Scientific Discovery" (lecture)
Date: February 28, 2013
Times: 10:00 am - 11:30 am
Location: Kiva Room, UA Student Union Memorial Center
Scholar, researcher and author Michael Nielsen will be at the University of Arizona on Thursday, February 28, 2013 to deliver a talk titled “Open Science: Accelerating the Pace of Scientific Discovery.” The talk, which is free and open to the public, will be held from 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. in the Kiva Room at the Student Union Memorial Center.
The open science movement supports making scientific research and data immediately and publicly available so that results can have greater impact as they will be easier to find, reach a wider audience, and accelerate the course of research.
A Fulbright scholar, Michael Nielsen not only made significant research contributions in the field of quantum physics, but also co-wrote the popular Quantum Computation and Quantum Information. Nielsen left academia to focus his research on “open science,” and recently published Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science -- a book that discusses the internet’s ability to “amplify our collective intelligence” and the cultural obstacles of the scientific community impeding this dramatic shift.
According to Nielsen, his talk will describe “how the internet is enabling a radical shift in how science is done. We'll see how mass online collaborations are being used to prove mathematical theorems; how online markets are allowing scientific problems to be outsourced; and how online citizen science projects are enabling amateurs to make scientific discoveries.”
Nielsen goes on to say, “these and other projects show how online tools can be used to amplify our collective intelligence, and so extend our scientific problem-solving ability. This promise is only part of the story, however, for today there are many cultural barriers inhibiting scientists from using online tools to their full potential. I discuss these cultural barriers, and how they can be overcome."
The Libraries are sponsoring Michael Nielsen’s campus talk as part of a continued focus on raising awareness at the University of Arizona about the challenges, opportunities, and scholarly and academic resources available through open access initiatives, including open science. Such movements have broad implications for a range of academic disciplines including the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities.