NCEAS: Promoting Creative Collaborations

PLoS Biology | http://biology.plosjournals.org A substantial portion of research occurs in places where scholars congregate—in campus laboratories, in libraries, or in large specialized facilities, such as oceanographic ships, astronomical observatories, or accelerators. Under any of these circumstances, researchers can interact easily, exchanging ideas and information. Ecological research, especially the large component occurring in the fi eld, takes place in disparate locations all over the world—in the air, on the surface, and below the oceans, lakes, and crust of the planet. Although there are many biological fi eld stations where scientists and students gather, much of the research in ecology takes place in isolation. In addition to being highly dispersed geographically, ecology encompasses a disparate range of disciplines at scales from molecules to the globe, making the exchange of ideas and information even more diffi cult. Recognizing the benefi ts of interaction and collaboration, the ecological community began considering a synthesis center where researchers from many fi elds could meet to address important ecological questions. Several organizations held discussions about the nature of such a center, which culminated in two workshops hosted by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the early 1990s, to set the scope. In 1994, NSF conducted an open competition for a synthesis center, eventually granting the University of California, Santa Barbara, the award for the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). In addition to funding from NSF, the center is supported by the University of California system and its Santa Barbara campus and by several foundations. The center employs various types of research approaches. A primary approach is through Working Groups (Figure 1) where scientists come to NCEAS to concentrate on specifi c issues requiring synthesis of ideas, inCommunity Page