Meeting of the Board of Regents | October 2007

Executive Summary

Issue for Decision

Approval of a $1,130,946 grant to The University of the State of New York.

Reason(s) for Consideration

The purpose of this grant is to support the creation of "Movebank", a new online tool for archiving and studying animal movement. Every year hundreds of biologists track thousands of animals to address major environmental challenges including invasive species, infectious diseases, climate and land-use changes. New tracking technologies are allowing more researchers to collect more data more easily, but we lack the cyberinfrastructure to archive, manage, and integrate these data. Movebank provides two major advances: making modern and historic animal movement data broadly accessible and offering real-time interaction with live tracking data. Certain data will also be made available to the general public, capitalizing on the excitement of the combination of high-tech tracking and charismatic animals, to educate through a public "cyberdashboard", magazine articles (e.g. National Geographic) and collaboration with the Science Buddies network of science fair students.

Proposed Handling

Decision

Recommendation

That the Board of Regents accept the sum of $1,130,946 from the National Science Foundation to further the work of the Office of Cultural Education – New York State Museum.