AltSU to become a partner of a long-term biodiversity project between Norway, South Africa and Russia

The joint project "BioDATA Advanced - DNA barcoding, biological collections and field observations for the purposes of accelerated biodiversity research" was submitted by the Museum of Natural History at the University of Oslo in cooperation with the South African Institute of Biodiversity and Altai State University.

The partnership network for the implementation of this project is much wider and strengthened by the national nodes of the GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility, Global Biodiversity Information System) in Norway (GBIF Norway) and South Africa (South African National Biodiversity Institute / South African Biodiversity Information Facility,) with the participation of Dmitry Shchigel (GBIF Secretariat, Copenhagen, Denmark). The project leader is Professor Hugo de Boer (University of Oslo, Norway).

The project will offer young researchers from Russia, Norway and South Africa, within the framework of the five years of the program, the opportunity to participate in academic mobility and professional training in the study of biodiversity, using modern skills in the field of methods for obtaining, processing, publishing and using open data. In particular, it is planned to implement two intensive courses on biodiversity data analysis and two courses of work in scientific laboratories. The courses are designed to create a network of exchange between professionals and students through targeted internships and facilitate open access to biodiversity data both in the project countries and around the world. All learning materials will be available in English and Russian for free and open reuse in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the DIKU Foundation for Equitable and Quality Education.

The international project included a team of botanists from the South Siberian Botanical Garden of the flagship Altai State University: Aleksey Vaganov, the project leader from Russia, a senior researcher at the South-Siberian Botanical Garden, Alena Shibanova, an assistant coordinator, translator, senior researcher of the SSBG, and Alexander Shmakov, Director of SSBG, the project administrator from Russia.

“Why were we invited to participate in the project? It can be said with certainty that there has been a certain effect from our diverse work on the development of biodiversity informatics methods and approaches to data mobilization in our naturally rich macroregion. Of course, this is the digitization of biological collections of living objects from the territory of the Altai mountainous country and the representation of our university in GBIF. Of course, this is the research level of the ongoing work in the South Siberian Botanical Garden and the influx of young personnel from the Institute of Biology and Biotechnology of Altai State University, the development of the laboratory complex and many years of experience in organizing international field summer schools by the AltSU Botanical Garden for foreign students from Germany. It should be noted that in partnership with GBIF, a network of environmental and educational organizations in Russia and Kazakhstan with the financial support of the V. Potanin Foundation of AltSU, in the 2020-2021 academic year, the massive online course "Computer Technologies in Biology" was successfully launched on the national platform Stepik.org, which is one of the first such courses in the world, and one of the largest. I think that all this focused work served as the basis for including our team in the project. In turn, the leadership of our university also contributed to the development of a new scientific and educational direction by acquiring two Microtek ObjectScan 1600 scanners in 2021 to digitize biological collections,” explains Alexei Vaganov, the project coordinator.

The implementation of the program for the period from 2021 to 2025 will be monitored by Diku, the Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Improvement of Higher Education as part of the large-scale UTFORSK program. The UTFORSK program is a key tool in Norway's strategic policy to develop higher education and research partnerships with Brazil, India, Japan, China, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, the USA and Canada. An important goal of the UTFORSK program is to strengthen the links between higher education partner countries to create the foundations for a sustainable future.