Towards a Science Commons
Speaker: John Wilbanks, Science Commons
When: 2008-06-11 11:00:00
Venue: 78-420
Host: Prof Jane Hunter
Abstract:The power of the Web makes it possible to share, use, and develop new
tools that leverage existing knowledge to greater productivity. But
while the Web provides significant opportunity to enhance the use of
research results, there are also particular needs different from the
cultural web that have to be met. The digital information space is
locked up in formats that don't support machine-assisted research, and
under legal regimes that prevent format transformation and indexing. And
the basic benefits of "web 1.0" like e-commerce have yet to translate to
the research web, leaving physical research tools languishing in lab
refrigerators and freezers instead of fostering new discoveries. This
talk will lay out a set of initiatives at Science Commons intended to
accelerate the rate of scientific research through legal, technical, and
social regimes that create a "commons" for life sciences research.
Biography:John Wilbanks is the Executive Director of the Science Commons project
at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at
the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences.
Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a
bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in
pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, John was the first
Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at
Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide
to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark.
John holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and
studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He
is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation.
John also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of
Medicine's PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open
Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix
Ars Electronica's Digital Communities awards. He also serves on the
Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository
organization.
Type: ITEE Seminar
Contact:Prof Jane Hunter, seminar host (jane@itee.uq.edu.au)
or Guido Governatori (ITEE seminar co-ordinator)
(guido@itee.uq.edu.au)