ICSU Grants Programme
Eight projects received grants in 2012. A total of 240,000 euros was awarded. The projects will send final reports to ICSU before 1 July 2013.
Project List of 2012 ICSU Grants Programme
IMU
Capacity and Network Project (CANP) Central America and the Caribbean
Mathematical thinking and knowledge play a key role in providing tools for understanding science, engineering, technology and economics. In today’s world, it is an essential key to unlock people’s potential, but many developing countries still lack quality mathematical education and networks involving all stake holders. The Capacity and Network Project (CANP) taps into that gap.
CANP Central America and the Caribbean is an international scientific development initiative of the International Mathematical Union, carried out jointly with its sub commission ICMI and supported by UNESCO, the ICSU Regional Office for Latin America & the Caribbean, Interamerican Committee on Mathematics Education, the Ministry of Education of Costa Rica as well as regional universities. Cooperation with regional governments is discussed.
The Project aims to strengthen mathematical education through fostering regional development and capacity building for teachers and educators, forming self-sustainable networks concerned with mathematics education, assuring better quality education and enhancing the mathematical and pedagogical potential of the region. It is also an opportunity to experience technological resources.
A central question is how to move towards a regionally distinct and appropriate teaching mode that meets the requirements of contemporary mathematics education, a mode that involves more student participation.
The Project will have at its centre a two week programme held in Costa Rica from August 6-17, 2012, consisting of a workshop for forty participants from Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, and the Dominican Republic. Satellite activities targeting a wider audience will also be organised. A post-workshop in 2013 will ensure continuity and evaluation.
CANP is organised by a team of international and regional mathematicians and educators and will contribute to the growth of a regional professional community in Central America and the Caribbean.
IUPAP
African School of Electronic Structure Methods and Applications (ASESMA)
The African School Series on Electronic Structure Methods and Applications (ASESMA) aims to strengthen the field of computational material science in Africa by focussing on the fundamentals of the theory, algorithms and computation for properties of materials of great interest in Africa. The School involves doctoral students and young researchers, includes educational opportunities, and provides international-quality mentorships for research projects on a range of research problems in computational material science. The School series is planned on a biennial basis from 2010 to 2020. The first School was held in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010. The second one takes place in Eldoret, Kenya, in June 2012. Strengthening networking, collaborations and mobility involving African scientists during the period of time between the 2012 and 2014 Schools is one of the main targets of the project supported by ICSU. This will be achieved by taking a series of concrete actions starting from the 2012 School. Mentors and lecturers will travel and meet with small groups of participants in Africa to assist and lend support for their on-going work. A selection of participants in the 2012 and 2010 Schools will be invited to visit mentors, lecturers and/or other international institutions to continue with collaborations. Participants will also be encouraged to attend international conferences, and in particular international workshop on electronic structure methods and applications to present their work. Small workshops on a regional basis in Africa for follow-up studies will also be organized jointly with local institutions. The School series is managed by an International Advisory Panel chaired by Prof Richard Martin (Univ. Illinois).
More information is available at the ASESMA website: http://asesma.ictp.it
SCAR
Assessing the Contribution o Ice-Sheet Mass Balance to Sea Level Change
Sea level rise is expected to have important impacts on coastal areas, particularly on low-lying land such as delta river regions and small island states. As stressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the accurate prediction of future sea-level rise is critical for designing proper adaptation policies. Recent studies have suggested that the ice sheets will be the dominant contributor to sea level rise in the 21st century.
The Ice Sheet Mass Balance and Sea Level (ISMASS) group is jointly sponsored by two ICSU member organizations, the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) and the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). The aim of ISMASS is to develop a revitalized approach towards the assessment of methods and uncertainties in the estimation of the mass balance of the Antarctic and Greenland ice-sheets and their contribution to sea level rise.
The ISMASS 2012 Workshop, to be held in Portland, Oregon, USA, on 14 July 2012 (http://www.climate-cryosphere.org/en/events/2012/ISMASS/Home.html), aims to set out a roadmap of the research required over the next 5 years to improve our knowledge of the contribution of the ice-sheets to sea level. The workshop will also discuss ongoing and proposed projects, such as the ESA/NASA Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise.
The workshop is organized by SCAR and IASC, together with the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP), the International Glaciological Society and the International Association of Cryospheric Sciences. Coordinating support is provided by the WCRP/SCAR/IASC Climate and the Cryosphere programme and the Association of Polar Early Career Scientists.
The themes of this workshop address most of ICSU’s strategic priorities. In particular, its focus on observing, forecasting, and responding to sea level rise, linking it to ICSU’s Grand Challenges in Global Sustainability.
SCOSTEP
Capacity Building and Science Education Activities in Solar Terrestrial Physics: Forcusing on Southeast Asia, Africa and South America
The Scientific Committee on Solar Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP) has partnered with the International Space Weather Initiative (ISWI) in capacity building and science education (CBASE) activities in Asia, Africa, and South America in collaboration with the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) and ICSU regional offices for Asia and the Pacific (ICSU/ROAP), Africa (ICSU/ROA), and Latin America and the Caribbean (ICSU/ROLAC). The CABSE activities consist of three elements: (i) conducting advanced schools in Space Weather/Space Science (ii) organizing teacher workshops for the benefit of school teachers in the host country, and (iii) conducting space instrumentation workshops to disseminate information on low-cost instruments that can be deployed in developing countries to gather valuable data on space weather from ground. Three Space Weather/Space Science schools will be organized in the three key regions of the world where there is growing need and interest in STP research: Asia Pacific (2012) Africa (2013), and South America (2014). The school topics will cover the origin of solar magnetic variability in the convective envelope of the Sun, the emergence of magnetic regions into the solar atmosphere, the production of large-scale solar eruptions and their impact on Earth’s space environment. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of the Sun in Earth’s climate in comparison with the anthropogenic effects such as the production of greenhouse gases. Space weather is a natural hazard produced by large-scale solar storms that result in intense particle radiation engulfing Earth for days at a time, potentially hazardous to humans and their technology in space. The planned CBASE activities are in line with the objectives of ICSU in promoting the universality of science in the field of Solar-Terrestrial Physics. SCOSTEP acknowledges the financial support provided by ICSU.
WCRP-CORDEX
Regional Climate Downscaling to Manage Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation - CORDEX South-Asia
The CORDEX South-Asia project aims to develop a capacity building effort in the monsoon South-Asia to translate regional climate downscaled data into meaningful sustainable development information. For Asia, CORDEX represents an unprecedented opportunity to gain an understanding of regional climate responses to global climate change. While CORDEX is not explicitly tied to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) timeline, this initiative will deliver a greatly enhanced contribution to the IPCC in the future. CORDEX currently has no facility in monsoon South-Asia to bridge the gap between regional climate data and its impact on societal areas such as water, energy, health and agriculture.
The immediate objective of this proposal is for a fast tracked initial assessment of the various CORDEX climate models outputs and Vulnerability, Impact and Adaptation (VIA) implications, regionally focused and prioritized to South-Asia’s user-knowledge needs by developing a trans-disciplinary community of collaborations around the exceptional opportunity of a common CORDEX Asia-wide experimental design.
The group trained through this capacity building and education action would become expertise at regional levels to further train and advise a future expanded effort on CORDEX analysis and interpretation of regional climate change responses and related VIA aspects. This proposal targets the science-policy interface by developing an innovative framework at the juncture between different disciplines and by stimulating the exchange and dissemination of climate information to concerned stakeholders.
This project, through two main capacity building workshops, represents a first building block of a necessary and timely opportunity to analyze regional climate data for more systematic sustainable development and impact studies.
WDS
Development of a Network Data Centre for Socio-Econimic Data in Africa
The project is aimed at the creation of a proof of concept for a ‘Network Data Centre’. The Centre will provide standardised access to a variety of network member data collections in the field of Social, Human Activity, and Economic Sciences for Africa, and serve as a conduit between the WDS and the contributing organisations. The Centre will only be a success if the governance, policy, and procedural framework to support multi-national, multi-institutional collaboration can be determined, and the proof of concept, in addition to its technical objectives, has a major responsibility to define this framework.
DataFirst, at the University of Cape Town has done ground-breaking work, in collaboration with the World Bank, to preserve and disseminate socio-economic data from African countries. DataFirst has agreed to be a data provider to the initiative with a view to improve access to Africa-wide, quality socio-economic data, and will serve as an important example of how the Centre can improve access to such data.
The funding will augment this process in the following ways:
- Assist ICSU Africa to introduce additional data providers in Africa to formal dissemination infrastructure.
- Allow role-players, stakeholders and project participants to assemble for at least one face-to-face meeting to plan implementation and generate guidance in respect of governance, policy, and procedural challenges.
- Assist NRF to link sustainable, interoperable data services from data provider infrastructure.
- Assist data providers to participate by way of automated meta-data creation, maintenance, and synchronisation.
- Create a proof of concept for a ‘Network Data Centre’ that focuses on distributed data access through traditional and mobile phone channels.
The intention is to apply for WDS membership as a network organisation on completion of the project. Three objectives are envisaged:
- Objective 1: Human Activity Data is Critical to Evaluation of Change – and is not being addressed comprehensively in the African context;
- Objective 2: Network Data Centres are a New Frontier – and requires some guidelines in respect of governance, policy, and procedural frameworks for multi-country, multi-institutional collaboration.
- Objective 3: Actions Speak Louder than Words – and a working proof of concept from a technical perspective, linked to real data sources and based on real physical infrastructure, will make future operationalization, extension, and funding support substantially simpler.
Benefits are wide ranging, and include not only scientists and researchers, but funding agencies, governments, and civil society.
IUPHAR
Addressing Africa's future healthcare needs: Building capacity in medical safety & integrative organ systems pharmacology
The world’s political and international health leaders recognize the need to strengthen health systems with renewed interest to make sustainable improvements in health research development and service delivery in order to benefit disease areas and health programmes. These efforts will contribute to meet the challenge of achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Health and Human Well-being within Africa is one of the key priorities of the ICSU strategic plan (2006-2011). The ICSU ROA science plan in this priority area highlights the value of capacity enhancement, information sharing and building of indigenous knowledge systems in relation to medicine and healthcare. Emphasis is placed on the need to integrate traditional/complementary and alternative medicine with modern biomedicine to improve healthcare delivery in Africa. In addition, skills in the safety of medicines, either traditional or orthodox, with respect to research and application within the science of pharmacovigilance is an area of increasingly critical importance and compliments the area of traditional/complementary and alternative medicine.
The proposed project will promote capacity building in the translation of basic research sciences (i.e., bench to bedside) and application of the safety of medicines in Africa. This will be accomplished by conducting workshops for post-graduate students and junior faculty on basic principles and techniques for the development and evaluation of new traditional or orthodox medicines, complemented by training in the principles and practical applications of the assessment of the safety of medicines. The project will further assist and provide guidance to access information on sources and resources, such as electronic media, web-based materials, etc., to ensure continuing instruction and lifelong learning in drug development and the safety of medicines. The project will offer a platform to build sustainable networks, research and other infrastructure at within individual countries and across the continent and facilitate the establishment of centres of excellence in Africa.
IRDR
Disaster Risk Management in Latin America and the Caribbean-Towards an Integrated project plan for the Region
The major activity presented in this ICSU grant proposal, submitted by the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) and supported by the ICSU Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (ICSU ROLAC), and the National Council for Scientific and Technological Research of Argentina (CONICET) is a workshop on disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean in Buenos Aires, Argentina in September 2012. The workshop will bring together established scientists, young scientists and policy-makers from different countries in the LAC region and integrate various disciplines in the natural and social sciences as well as engineers. It aims to strengthen scientific capacity in disaster risk research and identify policies to most efficiently reduce losses due to disasters in the region. Before the workshop, there will be a training session for a number of talented young scientists who will then actively participate in the workshop and in the generation of the workshop document.
The expected outcome of the workshop is a plan of action for disaster risk reduction in Latin America and the Caribbean. This plan of action should contain recommendations regarding the improvement of disaster risk research, identify gaps of existing knowledge, and enhance policies to reduce disaster risk in the LAC region.
The workshop will be based on the analysis put forward in the ICSU ROLAC science plan entitled “Understanding and Managing Risk Associated with Natural Hazards: A Comprehensive Scientific Approach for Latin America and the Caribbean”. It will serve as a platform to initiate the implementation of this science plan. The project will provide an excellent opportunity for a close collaboration between IRDR, ICSU ROLAC and other partners in the region to reduce disaster risk in Latin America and the Caribbean.
by Vivien Lee
