Details

Published on Friday, 12 January 2024 01:19

By Colleen Marciel F. Rosales, Ph.D. | Strategic Partnerships Director at OpenAQ | Postdoctoral Researcher at the Air Quality Research Center, University of California in Davis

The Science Gateways Community is a new yet familiar community to me. I was fortunate to be chosen as a Travel Grant awardee, allowing me to attend the Science Gateways 2023 Annual Conference. 

As a Science Gateway, the organization I work at, OpenAQ, provides universal and open access to real-time and historical air quality data worldwide. By providing universal access to air quality data, OpenAQ empowers a global community of changemakers to solve air inequality.

The Science Gateways Community is very vibrant and welcoming. Even though I was a newcomer, I did not feel like an outsider. I was very glad to meet like-minded individuals who willingly share their data and software to enable basic foundational research and activities that empower societal changes. With my background as an air quality scientist, I was very interested in meeting attendees who focused on different topics but spoke the same computing languages. I was also excited to share the successes of OpenAQ as a Science Gateway and acquire learnings from existing gateways, especially noteworthy ones like nanoHUB. 

Through this conference, I learned new services like OpenOnDemand, which would be helpful for the OpenAQ Community Ambassadors–young leaders from low- and middle-income countries–as they embark on wrangling air quality science, community advocacy, and open data. Services like OpenOnDemand enable open and accessible science and analyses that provide the bedrock for meaningful societal changes. 

I was very honored to receive the Rising Star Award for my work with OpenAQ. "The SGX3 Rising Star of the Year award acknowledges Rising Stars' notable achievement in advancing science gateways. Selected Rising Star of the Year individuals will receive an honorarium of $500 and a certificate." 

My favorite event was Portal Pitch, a mini-Hackathon. It provided a fast-paced environment that allowed quick collaborations amongst the participants in defining and outlining solutions to an issue of our choice. Our team presented a solution for sophisticated, multi-dimensional language translation algorithms for news articles that are helpful for non-native speakers in a particular country. Portal Pitch was a great way to end a two-day conference.

Thank you very much to the Science Gateways Community for the opportunity to attend SGX3 and for the Rising Star Award!