About

Through engaging, empowering, and amplifying environmental scientists with data science and open practices, Openscapes aims to enable better science in less time by creating a more efficient and collaborative culture in science. The Openscapes Champions program mentors environmental scientists and empowers them and their labs with open data science tools and practices and helps grow the community of practice within the lab, department, and beyond. Our inaugural Champions cohort includes seven scientists leading inspiring research: read about their research and Openscapes progress.

In March 2019 we brought the Champions together for a mid-program Summit as a chance to meet in person, strengthen relationships, share lessons learned, problem solve, and ignite new collaborations. We were also joined by two special guests who provided invaluable insight and comradery. Dr. Christie Bahlai — an applied quantitative ecologist and professor at Kent State University and Mozilla Fellow (2015) — shared her insight on creating an open lab culture and championing open data science practices in ecology. And Sean Kross — a PhD student at UC San Diego studying Human-Computer Interaction — shared insight on open software and data science instruction, including coding up some software for Champions on the fly. The Summit exceeded our (high!) expectations and we have started sharing reflections from the event in blog posts: the first is Openscapes summit reflections — becoming champions

The Summit was generously supported by Mozilla and hosted by NCEAS.