The Synaptic Leap

I hesitated to write this status note. Although we have done a lot, it's mostly behind the scenes work and you aren't likely to feel the love if you know what I mean. However, I want to continue my open communications with you and I don't want you to think nothing is happening. I'll try to acknowledge all contributions and keep the admin information brief.

Accomplishments

Switched Hosting Sites

Doug Chasman, our latest volunteer for The Synaptic Leap, has worked hard to move our site to a different hosting provider.  We wanted to switch hosting providers so that we could consolidate our full set of development tools along with our production environment. This will make it easier for us to build an extensible development environment whereby scientific tools can be added to our site. The great news is that Doug was able to move us without shutting down the site. There is more still to do to build our development site.

Conflicts of Interest Policy

The board and I decided that we needed an official Conflicts of Interest policy to ensure that we make decisions that are truly in the best interest of The Synaptic Leap. With the help of our attorney, we have agreed to a solid policy that will guide us to behave responsibly. 

Operational Review With Our Board of Directors

It's no longer me calling all the shots. With a fully functioning board who will be making decisions, I felt it important to catch them up on the operational details. We met on April 11 for more than three hours covering projected budgets, actual expenses, software and hardware  environments and site adoption and usage trends.  It took me quite a bit of time to pull the information together. The great news is that with more eyeballs on the subject, fresh points were brought up and we are evolving our plan of action together.

501(c)(3) Application Nearly Completed

501(c)(3) is IRS designation for non-profit. Form 1023, the application for 501(c)(3) designation, is long and ugly (shocker!). Even the instructions are long and ugly. I have reviewed a first draft of our application with our accountant and have now sent v2 to our board of directors for additional input and modifications.  I hope to send a completed version to the IRS next week. Then, we wait...

Draft of Financial Policy and Procedures

One of our volunteers, Kara Jurist, has drafted a financial policy and procedures for the TSL to begin operating under. I plan to review this with our Treasurer, Paul Pedrazzi, once he's though reviewing the 501(c)(3) application. We will submit these policies and procedures to the board for modifications and approval at our next board meeting. 

Mat's Article Approved for Publication

Matt Todd, our schisto community leader, worked with other founding members of The Synaptic Leap to author an article about his open and collaborative research project on The Synaptic Leap. The article has been approved for publication by the Australian Journal of Chemistry. The journal was interested in the idea of open source biomedical research and felt that it would be interesting to their readers. This is a great example of how a scientist found the right approach for conducting open science online and still was able to publish an article in a high-impact journal.

For obvious reasons, we can not share the text of the article with you. However, once the article is published, we will be sure to post a link to it.   

Future Action Items

Find a New Malaria Community Leader

Marc A. Marti-Renom has been given a great opportunity to lead his own lab in Valencia Spain, his home country. Although Marc plans to continue open science contributions via Tropical Disease Initiative and The Synaptic Leap, he is realistic and knows that he can't LEAD the malaria community.  Additionally, Marc has suggested that although he's web-savvy and full of passion, he thinks that the Malaria community at The Synaptic Leap will benefit greatly by a person who specializes in Malaria research. Marc's scientific background is more general computational biology and structural genomics.

We are therefore looking for a malaria research specialist who is reasonably web-savvy and can help to inspire new open, collaborative projects and connect resources together on projects that are under way. If you are that person and are interested in volunteering your time to become part of a new revolutionary approach for open, collaborative science, email gtaylor@thesynapticleap.org.

In the mean time, Ginger is reaching out to our various scientific advisors to get their best ideas on the subject.

Collaborate on Grant Proposals

Now that we have most of our significant organizational tasks behind us, we can begin applying for grants. We won't be able to apply for non-profit grants yet - not until we get our designation letter from the IRS. In the mean time, there are plenty of grants available to a wide variety of organizations that offer new ways to conduct research. For example, we plan to collaborate with Ricardo Pietrobon, from Duke University's CESO program, on an an SBIR grant.

Mat is also submitting a grant for his PZQ project for schisto. (This is also why we haven't heard much from Mat in while...)  In his proposal he is explaining how by conducting this project on The Synaptic Leap, that believes there is more bang for the grant dollar. He is hopeful that the reviewers will see the benefits and will fund his project. Hint, hint, you too might want to play this angle on your next grant application.

TSL Scientific Collaborations

There have been many behind the scenes (e.g. not on described on the site) emails and discussions regarding various open collaborative projects. We will continue to participate in these discussions and will offer advice on how these projects can use our site. We will also listen intently to discover what changes/modifications they need to be effective. As appropriate, we may also collaborate on grant proposals with these scientists.

I've noticed a real hesitency for people to openly discuss potential projects until the ideas mature a bit.  Over time, I hope people will become more willing to let ideas incubate and succeed or fail online.  Time will tell...

What You Can Do

Although I am confident that at least a few of the brewing collaborations I know of will bear fruit, I still feel that the single most important thing we need is more active scientific projects on the site. If you're working on malaria or schisto, I highly encourage you to tell others about your project by posting a project page on our site. Describe the resource help you need or input / opinions you are looking for. You never know, somebody just might pipe up and help out.