Mozilla Science Lab Week in Review, January 12-18

Shoutouts

Shoutouts go out this week to the community members who spoke at our community call last Thursday: Grant Miller from Zooniverse on lessons from Citizen Science, Garret Christensen from BITSS on the Reproducibility Manual for Social Science, and Tim Errington from the Center for Open Science on the Reproducibility Project – Cancer Biology.

Our great gratitude also goes out to Ben Marwick and the eScience Institute at the University of Washington, for organizing and hosting a huge and successful trial run of staffing a Software Carpentry workshop with instructors recently graduated from Instructor Training – Russell Alleen-Willems, Becca Blakewood, Tracy Fuentes, Emilia Gan,  Chungho Kim, Maria Mckinley, Dominik Moritz, Ana Malagon, Ben Marwick, Marina Oganyan, Jaclyn Saunders, Peter Schmiedeskamp, Thomas Sibley, Rachael Tatman, Tiffany Timbers, Sam White, Earle Wilson, helpers Esther Le Grezause and Tania Melo,  and more. Thanks all!

In & Around the Lab

Kaitlin Thaney announced the launch of the Science Lab’s first fellowship program this week – we will soon be offering fellowships for early career researchers centered around training for more efficient, collaborative research as well as community leadership. The fellowships each run for ten months, and are paid positions at $60,000 each, as financed by a generous grant from the Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. Applications will open in the near future – stay tuned and be sure to apply!

In addition to the fellows, this announcement also included the creation of three new positions at the Science Lab – a call for a Data Program Lead, a Train-the-Trainers Lead as well as a Curriculum Designer will open in the next few months, to help support the fellows program, and carry our education program forward with dedicated staff. We are very excited to have three new hands on deck, and will begin the call for applications in the coming months – we hope you’ll join us!

This past week saw the Science Lab resume its monthly community call – thanks again to the speakers named above, and please take a moment to peruse the notes.

Meanwhile, Bill Mills visited the eScience Institute at the University of Washington to help MC a Software Carpentry workshop, staffed with the huge line-up of new instructors named above. This was the first cut at this model, of encouraging as many participants in the live Instructor Training as possible to throw a workshop shortly after the event in order to test out their new skills and get some practical, hands on experience at teaching, under the supervision of one of the instructor trainers. The event was a huge success, and generated a rich set of observations and recommendations to inform the next time we try this model, at the Research Bazaar next month.

Near-Term Forecast

Over the next few weeks, the Science Lab will be finalizing its plans for Instructor Training at the Research Bazaar; preparing the details for when the call for applications opens for our new fellowship and staff positions in the coming months; and shaking down a whole host of new design and features for when Collaborate finishes its beta period, hopefully as soon as the end of the month! Meanwhile, please join us on IRC or the forums – we’d love to hear from you.

Reading List

What Would Happen if Grant Reviews Were Made Public? | Nature

The Next Big Step for Wikidata – Forming a Hub for Researchers | Wikipedia

Two New Major Wins for Transparency Advocates | Healthcare Dive

Diversify – Creating a Hackathon with 50/50 Female and Male Participants | Spotify Labs