Strengthening Computational Biodiversity Research in Greece

This ERA chair proposal has two objectives: (1) to set up an interdisciplinary and internationally visible Biodiversity Computing Group (BCG) at the Institute of Computer Science at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (ICS-FORTH). The BCL shall substantially and sustainably strengthen computational biodiversity research and research on computational methods for disentangling molecular evolution in Crete with a spill-over effect to Greece. This is motivated by the fact that computational biodiversity research is currently substantially under-developed in Greece, while the area has been recognized as a Biodiversity hotspot due to its high levels of spatial, temporal and habitat heterogeneity as well as complex geological and climatic history since the late Tertiary with an exceptionally high percentage of endemism, particularly so, on the island of Crete. It shall generate excellent research outputs with an emphasis on the quality of scientific articles but explicitly not quantity, as well as usable and well-documented open source software for Biodiversity computing. This will contribute to knowledge generation in the area of computational biodiversity research at a global scale. (2) The ERA chair shall furthermore attract excellent students and researchers from Greece, and abroad to be trained at and to collaborate with BCG. Thus the project contributes to foster brain gain and to prevent brain drain at ICS-FORTH. This is crucial as currently still too many excellent students leave Greece for a PhD abroad and too few of them return. Also, too few international scientists move to Greece from abroad.