Friday Research Exchange: Collaborative Science, a Case Study for Chemical Kinetics

• April 7, 2006: 11:00am - 12:00pm
• Contact: Travis Richardson
• Location: 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building, the Maria & Dado Banatao Conference Room, UC Berkeley

This week, UCB Mechanical Engineering Professors Andy Packard and Michael Frenklach will present "Collaborative Science, a Case Study for Chemical Kinetics "

The talk will be in 290 Hearst Memorial Mining Building from noon to 1pm on Friday, April 7, and lunch will be provided.

Click here to view the archived video.

Abstract:
Chemical kinetics modeling can be viewed as a high dimensional, distributed, system identification problem. Traditional channels of dissemination, e.g.  journal papers and web-site data compilations, have proven to be inadequate in pooling and extracting all information implicit in the community's research portfolio.  An alternate approach using independently contributed web-based assertions of models and experimental outcomes, each potentially originating from distinct research groups, along with global optimization to reason and infer with these assertions is promising. However, sociological questions/issues such as "to whom is credit due?" and "why should I participate in this collaborative effort?" arise. We will detail why the alternative approach is preferable and discuss a new research effort aimed at  deploying the tools within the chemical kinetics community. We will also discuss our experience using these ideas in atmospheric chemistry and systems biology settings.