On the next project and returning to Ethiopia

In the past year, I’ve watched a lot of my friends finish their dissertations and move on to jobs as adjunct teaching faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and the rare tenure track job. One of my friends (@ZCofran) even left the U.S. (see Lawn Chair Anthropology) to bring biological anthropology to Kazakhstan. Soon I can officially join them in “post-dissertation world” and start my next project. It turns out that 2013 will indeed be the “Year of the Defense”, and 2014 will be the year I go back to Ethiopia and the “bleeding heart” baboons.

This past week, I learned I was awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology. My project falls under “Divsion II: Integrating Biology with Math and Physical Sciences.” I’ll be based out of Dan Rubenstein‘s lab at Princeton University, and collaborating with Tanya Berger-Wolf at the University of Illinois-Chicago. Although I’m still studying geladas, I’m shifting focus to larger patterns of social structure, ecology, and collective movement. Here is the title and abstract (also listed on the NSF website):

Dynamic network analysis of collective movement and herding in a complex primate society

This project combines field-based data with computational network analysis to understand how social relationships and ecological pressures mediate collective movement and herding in a complex primate society. Through using dynamic network analysis, this research will transform how biologists understand the adaptive value of association in changing environments. The project will focus on the gelada (Theropithecus gelada) a primate species that lives in an extremely large modular society with high fission-fusion dynamics. Behavioral, ecological, and demographic data will be collected from a population of habituated geladas living in the Simien Mountains National Park, Ethiopia. Potential findings will be of great interest to computational scientists and behavioral ecologists interested in the evolution of cooperation, coordination, and complex systems.

This research will help conserve the Afroalpine habitat of the Simiens Mountains National Park (SMNP), Ethiopia—a UNESCO World Heritage Site “In Danger”. The fellow will give public talks on conserving Ethiopian biodiversity at a local ecotourism lodge and train Ethiopian nationals as field assistants to collect behavioral, ecological, and GPS data for the duration of this project. The fellow will also organize a workshop on applying network analysis to biology at Addis Ababa University. Additionally, the fellow will give talks to high school biology students and maintain a science blog while in the field. Open source software will be used when possible, and all code derived for analysis will be made freely available on the Internet upon completion of the project.

What does primatology 2.0 look like?

With the tragic death of Aaron Schwartz, the open-access movement has entered the public consciousness with bittersweet abruptness. For those that have not followed the story, Aaron is a bit of a folk hero (now martyr) in the open-access community. As a teenager and veritable prodigy, he helped develop RSS 1.0 (the web feed used in publishing and accessing frequently updated information, e.g. this blog). Later in his young life, he became a co-owner of Reddit and a fellow at Harvard’s Center for Ethics. Aaron believed in the free and open exchange of information. In particular, he (like many other proponents of the open-access movement) believed that academic journal publishers should make published articles freely available to the public. The logic being that much of this research is funded through tax payer money (NSF, NIH, etc.), and that tax payers should have access to such findings. In 2011, Aaron allegedly hacked into JSTOR (an online archive of published academic journals), downloaded 4.8 million documents, and released them to the public. With his trial set for later this year (and facing decades in prison), Aaron took his own life last week. In memoriam , many scientists have bucked publishers by releasing their articles for free through a “PDF tribute” on Twitter (#pdftribute).

Just prior to Aaron’s suicide I had a conversation with a member of my committee on the pros and cons of open access to scientific journals. I told this person that although I would like to publish much of my dissertation in open-access journals (PLoS Biology, the PeerJ, eLife, etc.), I often feel handcuffed by expectations of my committee and brand recognition of “high impact journals” among peers and future colleagues. None of my current papers are published in open-access journals, however I’d like to change that for the remaining parts of my dissertation. Over the next few weeks, I’ll have to get my committee on board.

The discussion with my committee member and Aaron’s death prompted me to do a little digging into the open-access movement in science. Open-access is just one branch of a growing “open science” or “science 2.0″ movement. The “open science”movement’s credo: can be summarized as this: “open source, open data, open access, open notebook.” For a full description see this entry from The Open Science Movement. As a primatologist (and more broadly a behavioral ecologist) finishing a Ph.D. and defining my future research program, I often ask myself, “How do I make my research more open? More importantly, “How do I help advance the field (primatology/behavioral ecology) through openness in methods and dissemination of results?” I established this blog several years ago to serve as a bit of a field journal, but I’ve been pretty mum about many of my preliminary results.  I am an R (an open source statistical computing language) user, but I haven’t openly posted any modified code I’ve written or worked on. These facts, coupled with my publication record make me wonder, “Am I engaging in open science, or just thinly veiled science?”

To my readers (especially field biologists and primatologists), how do we as a discipline create “Primatology 2.0?” Many of the great long-term primate field projects have many more years of pre-”open science” than post. As a result, attitudes towards “openness” will not easily be changed. For many primatologists (and other behavioral ecologists working with long-lived animals), data collection can take years to decades in order to acquire a sufficient sample size. Thus, data are closely guarded and publications are rare compared to other biological sciences. However, this does not mean that primatologists should not embrace most aspects of “open science.” Newly developed field sites and projects have the unique opportunity to integrate scientific methods and engage the public in ways not previously possible. From crowd-funding to citizen science projects, the possibilities are endless. We just need a place to start.

2013: The year of the defense and maybe more?

A few months back, I decided that (if all goes according to plan) this year will be my final year in graduate school. It is bittersweet to write about, but I am ready for the end. I have watched several of my friends defend their respective theses in the past year, and I’ve come to realize it’s time to wrap up my project and move on to the next step…a post-doc (again, if all goes according to plan). A post-doc (short for postdoctoral) is generally a full-time (but limited to 1-3 years) position where recent Ph.D.s gain additional training while pursuing independent research. Many post-docs are research based, however some include teaching appointments.

Recently, I have been feverishly writing up my dissertation. My field work is now a distant memory, and my memories of lab work are close behind. Even the endless spreadsheets, R files, and figures of my initial analyses (much of which I presented at several conferences last year) seem far away. Now, I try to perfect every word and figure as I prepare my dissertation “chapters” for publication. Like many doctoral candidates in the sciences, my dissertation is taking the form of several manuscripts that will be submitted for publication in peer-reviewed journals over the coming months. I have already co-authored two papers, so I’m no stranger to the process, but that doesn’t make the prospect of manuscript submission any less daunting.

This brings me back to the “plan” and the future. I wrapped up a post-doctoral fellowship application last fall for my next big project. If I receive the fellowship, I’ll have a home base that is not Ann Arbor, new colleagues, and three years to pursue the project.