June 17, 2009

Owned by Sheldon McKay
Last updated: Aug 21, 2009Version comment
2 min read

First meeting of the Ancestral Character State Reconstruction (ACSR) Working Group
June 17, 2009

Attendees: Brian O'Meara, Sheldon McKay, Karla Gendler, Dan Stanzione, Steve Goff, others...

Meeting purpose: The purpose of this meeting is to seek guidance from the designated iPToL working group lead (Bian O'Meara) on:

1. establishing the biological framework for the problem of ancestral character state reconstruction (ACSR)
2. entering the first stage of requirements analysis to determine where iPlant resources and personnel can best be used to accelerate and improve ACSR.

The main focus is introducing the problem to the engagement team and core developers and
roughing out the general parameters of the required infrastructure components and ACSR discovery environment.

Introduction: Sheldon McKay (5 minutes)

  • Roles of the engagement team, iPToL steering comittee and iPlant development team

Ancestral Character State Reconstruction Brian O'meara (30 minutes)

  • Biological and Phylogenetic motivation for ACSR
  • Applications of ACSR
  • Bottlenecks and checkpoints
  • Applicable existing tools and software components
  • Role of the ACSR postdoc
  • iPToL expectations of the engagement team and iPlant developers

Procedural issues Karla Gendler (5 minutes)

  • Funding and Postdoc recruitment
  • Meeting Frequency and Project Time Line
  • Reporting and Accountability

Questions from Executive Team (Dan Stanzione, Steve Goff)

Questions from Engagement Team (Sheldon McKay, Karla Gendler, Developer/analysts)

Meeting Notes 061709

Attending-Brian O, Sheldon, Karla, Dan, Steve, Matt, Damian, Jerry, Liya, Scott, Adam

Sheldon – WG is Brian, engagement team (Karla, Sheldon), developers Liya, Jerry, Adam, Scott, plus core developer group at UA. Steering committee is DS, SG, RAJ, Pam, Michael S., and Michael D., Karla, Sheldon.

Brian – showed Trait Evolution for iPlant slides and reviewed basic phylogenetic taxonomy concepts, considerations, bottlenecks, role of postdocs, opensource tools, expectations, etc. Use phylogeny to reconstruct changes through time. Many kinds of traits to consider.

Questions:

Dan-Excellent presentation gave us lots to work on, no questions.

BO interested in how project management will work.

Karla – using MS Project, but it’s Brian, Sheldon and Karla working to manage the project and keep it moving forward. Sheldon - Collaborative content management—using Alfresco. Channel communication through Karla and Sheldon. Also using Confluence. KG – do you have a postdoc in mind? BO – no. KG – still working out best method to fund, will get back to Brian when she knows more. Maybe an ad in Science for general recruiting. Steve – don’t let Business office slow anything down, just keep moving forward on finding a good postdoc for the role. BO-is there grad student funding? KG – budget includes $ for one. Jeremy--Michael D’s grad student? We can work to bring him on.

BO – next step? Sheldon – engagement team and developers will review and come up with action plan. Meet in 2 wks time? OK.

End: 2:45 PM.