research talk to the web dtc nov 2014

Re-imagining Scientific Research

A “Social Machine” of experienced researchers, technology & information

Jeremy Frey

j.g.frey@soton.ac.uk profechem

Digital Chemistry

Reducing and Managing Uncertainty

Chemistry 2.0 (or 3.0)

A Chemist’s Digital Aura

http://mosaically.com/PhotoMosaic/3289771f-0bf3-49bf-bc8a-1810167096ff

“We have lots of information technology. We just don’t have any information.”

Intelligent Open Access to Data

Reducing Uncertainty

• What is already known?

• Who is doing what?

• How was a result obtained?

• Access to Data

• Integration of Data.

• Provenance & Planning

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Research-Institute-21110

“The Laboratory”

• A laboratory is an Integration of people and equipment

• A complex socio-technical system

• Disrupted or integrated by digital infrastructure?

• How to support (a) people to do what they are best at doing and (b) computers to undertake what they can do best and (c) ensure that they can work together.

Contexts

• Digital context for human action

• Human context for computational processes

• To support provenance and trust of the laboratory process

• Ensure discovery, integration and validation of data and information

Reproducibility

• How to ensure reproducibly?

• How to preserve provenance?

• How to acquire trust?

• How to retract incorrect information

• Open Notebook Science

• Citizen science vs Expert Science

Scientific Data Value Chain

• Does the Web currently/have the potential to disrupt or support the data value chain?

http://www.dreamingnewmexico.org/food/ff-local-foodshed

Collaborations

• Impact of collaborative challenges

– Maths “Project Polymath”

– Games “Foldit”

– Analytics “Kaggle”

• How does this influence value and trust?

IBM Watson

Foldit Kaggle

Citizen Science

How do we communicate?

• Surprisingly difficult to explain what a process involves

• Much of the detail is assumed to be understood and not explicitly discussed

• This is where the miss-understandings usually arise.

If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. W. Edwards Deming

Growing need for the global (virtual) equivalent of the “Tea Room”

Semiotic Web• We have the document

Web• We have to some extent the

Web of Data • We have to a little extent

the Semantic Web of relationships

• We all interact with the Semiotic Web via the signs and symbols used in the human – Web interface

• But social, cultural, language, background influences on the interpretation is poorly understood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Name_of_rose_movieposter.jpg

EXAMPLES OF OUR LABS

Links with the Food Standards Agency

Internet of Things – Data Integration – Social MediaThe Food cloud

LabTrove Open Notebooks Mat Todd’s PZQ Project

BlogMyData Project - Godiva

LabTrove -> RSS -> Email / Twitter

All I am saying is that now is the time to develop the technology to deflect an asteroid

We must speed up the knowledge discovery process

The Art of Asking the Right Question

He who asks a question is a fool for five minutes;he who does not ask a question remains a fool forever.

—Chinese Proverb

Why is asking a good question on Quora (20 credits per follower) more rewarding than writing a good answer (10 credits per upvote)?

http://www.quora.com/Why-is-asking-a-good-question-on-Quora-20-credits-per-follower-more-rewarding-than-writing-a-good-answer-10-credits-per-upvote

LABORATORIES OF THE FUTURE

http://lab-on-chip.gene-quantification.info/

Everything is Awesome, Everything is cool when you're part of a team

The Lego Movie

Change in the whole way we design and build experiments

3D Printers: A radical change to the experimental section of a paper!

Trust me Mort - no electronic communications

superhighway, no matter how vast and sophisticated,

will ever replace the art of the schmooze

Thank you for listening