Fwd: [Engineering] KENET Travel Grants, Special Interest Group on CMMS and the Open Access Data Repository...
Dr.Jean Bosco BYIRINGIRO
From: Meoli Kashorda <mkas...@kenet.or.ke>
Date: Tue, Jul 25, 2017 at 4:47 PM
Subject: [Engineering] KENET Travel Grants, Special Interest Group on CMMS and the Open Access Data Repository
To: mkas...@kenet.or.ke
Cc: mth...@kenet.or.ke
Dear Colleagues,
I hope this e-mail finds you well. Sorry for cross-posting – I am sending this e-mail to many mailing lists that we have created in the last three years (e.g., e_infras...@kenet.or.ke for researchers in all areas, engin...@kenet.or.ke for engineering faculty collected during the baseline survey in 2015, ICTfa...@kenet.or.ke which is the oldest mailing list for ICT faculty that have in past interacted with KENET and dean_m...@kenet.or.ke for deans of medical schools collected in 2016).
I would like to give you an update on KENET research services that include travel grants for faculty and graduate students in STEM areas, the new Special Interest Group (SIG) in Computational Modelling and Materials Science (CMMS), the NRF Joint Infrastructure grant for setting up a national High Performance Computing (HPC) center, and the Open Access Data Repository (OADR) to be launched in September 2017.
- KENET Travel Grants for faculty and graduate students in STEM areas
As you might be aware, KENET awards up to 15 travel grants per FY to faculty and graduate students in STEM areas. In the FY 2016/2017, we awarded 12 travel grants to 7 faculty members, 5 graduate students from 7 different universities. Applications are open and online here and we sample the applicants at least once per week on a first come first served basis (two months in advance of the conference).
In the past, we have reserved up to 5 travel grants for IST Africa regional conference and up to 5 for IEEE AFRICON regional conference (this is for only computer science, information systems and electrical engineering faculty and graduate students). This was mainly because the Special Interest Group on Engineering (and CS ) was the first operational SIG at KENET
As of July 25, 2017, we had awarded 12 travel grants and so we only have 8 travel grants remaining. Most of the 12 travel grants are in the areas of electrical engineering and computer science, suggesting increased number of publications and awareness. However, KENET is simply a catalyst and cannot support more researchers unless we are able to attract external research grants. As you can see below, that is really the reason for forming SIGs – to apply for joint research grants that can support research projects and travel.
- Special Interest Group on Computational Modelling and Materials Science (CMMS) and the NRF High Performance Computing research infrastructure grant
In the past one year, the SIG on CMMS led by Prof George Amolo of Technical University of Kenya (He is a Physics professor, formerly of University of Eldoret) has been very active. The research IT services team, led by Dr. Moses Thida at KENET has supported the SIG in many ways. One of the major outcomes of the SIG on CMMS group was a successful submission of a KSh 100 million infrastructure grant proposal to NRF in November 2016. The grant proposal was for setting a national HPC center at KENET. We have already received advance information from NRF that KENET on behalf of the SIG on CMMS has been awarded and the money shall probably be released in September 2017 after elections.
This will be the first High Performance Computer Center that will be open to ALL users in our community (Physics, Engineering, Bioinformatics, Computational Biology/Chemistry, Pharmacy etc). ILRI hosts another regional HPC center that is used mainly by researchers in the Agricultural and Livestock research area. Some Kenyan researchers have also had access to the Cape Town High Performance Computer Center on a limited basis.
The SIG on CMMS held a workshop facilitated by KENET on July 6-7, 2017 at MMUST, Kakamega and developed about four research proposals in different areas in readiness for NRF Call for Proposals in 2017 (e.g., Materials Science for Energy Conversion and Computational Chemistry). See group photo below with Prof. Amolo (TUK), Dr. Manyali (MMUST and Host) and Dr. Moses Thiga and Ronald Osure (KENET research infrastructures). Notice the gender imbalance in this area of research!
It is possible for other member for other SIGs to organize similar workshop with KENET logistical and financial support.
- The KENET Open Access Data Repository (OADR)
Those among you who publish papers in Open Access journals know that there is a new requirement to publish the associated research data in an Open Access Data Repository. These repositories have been hosted outside the country and often benefit researchers in China and the western countries rather than Kenyan researchers.
There are also some researchers in our community who are setting up sensor networks for their research (e.g., in Agriculture or in Computational Biology, Marine Biology, Wildlife service) and others who are working on Internet of Things and require to store the large amounts of data collected over time. The volume of data is huge and some of our member institutions do not yet have the necessary storage capacity.
KENET is therefore developing an Open Access Data Repository (OADR) for our research community. This is currently under test by the research infrastructures team and we expect to launch it in September 2017. Although we know there is demand for the OADR from SIG on Engineering and the SIG on CMMS, we shall be sending out a survey after elections to establish the real demand for the OADR among other researchers.
See also the Africa Open Science Platform that is supported by the Research Data Alliance and the South African Academy of Sciences. These platforms will support research collaboration and quality of research outputs. We shall help you connect to those platforms to support your research agendas.
KENET’s mandate is to be a catalyst for research collaboration. That is the main reason we build broadband networks to your campuses and the shared research infrastructures hosted in KENET data centers in Nairobi (a form of Community Cloud for researchers). Please send an e-mail to Ms Nelisa Mwongera, the Community Relations officer or to Dr. Moses Thiga, Research Associate, in case you need some help from KENET’s research IT services group.
It is a joy serving the research community in Kenya and especially to see the energy and passion of research champions in our community. Our research community has the potential to experience a dramatic increase in research productivity.
Kind regards
Meoli Kashorda
Kenet
Office Phone: +254 732150500
Twitter: @meolik or @kenet_ke
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