Future focus at research conference

1 July, 2014

Future focus at research conference

About 120 delegates, mostly from Universities and research institutes from around Australasia, are attending the fifth eResearch New Zealand Conference being held this week at the University of Waikato.

The 2014 national eResearch conference concentrates on three areas - real world, data science and education - with presenters focussing on cultural, organisational and technical considerations in developing eResearch capabilities and solutions in these areas.

Organising chairperson Dr Jo Lane says eResearch is about using tools and technology to augment traditional research practices.

“It spans all research areas,” he says.

He says that in many areas of research, the sheer volume of data now available is the biggest problems researchers face.

“There’s so much data we don’t know how to process it”.

The conference is also exploring ways in which researchers can use technology to collaborate more effectively by developing ways to share what is often very large amounts of data.

Education is a key focus of the conference – both in terms of how existing researchers can develop these necessary eResearch skills and how we ensure that new generation of researchers learn this as a part of the postgraduate studies.

Dr Lane says as the use of technology in research becomes more ubiquitous, the ‘e’ tag in eResearch will eventually disappear.

Keynote speakers at the conference include Dave Turek from IBM, Professor Bryan Lawrence from the University of Reading and Kaitlin Thaney from the Mozilla Science Lab, an open science initiative of the Mozilla Foundation focused on innovation, best practice and skills training for research.

For more information about the conference visit: http://ernz2014.eresearch.org.nz/

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