News Release 14-166

$1 million prize for digital innovation to capture info from traditional 'bug boxes'

National competition launched to stimulate development of a new tool to digitally record images and data from museum insect collections

A bug box  that is the subject of the bug box competition.

This is the type of bug box that is the subject of the competition.


December 5, 2014

This material is available primarily for archival purposes. Telephone numbers or other contact information may be out of date; please see current contact information at media contacts.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) have launched the Beyond the Box National Digitization Innovation Competition. Through this competition, $1 million will be awarded to the individual or team that develops a novel way to accurately and efficiently capture digital images of insect specimens and their associated data from a standard museum drawer.

"The Beyond the Box Digitization Competition is designed to inspire the ingenuity of the American public and to engage scientists, engineers and everyday inventors in an effort to solve a problem that has been slowing the rate of scientific discovery," said James L. Olds, assistant director for the Directorate for Biological Sciences at NSF.

From the beauty of butterflies to the agricultural significance of honeybees to the public health implications of mosquitoes, insects significantly influence people's quality of life in varied ways every day.

"Insects are an amazingly diverse group of organisms that represent an overwhelming amount of living biological diversity on Earth," said AIBS President Joseph Travis. "Most are not pests, but instead play important roles in our ecosystems. They pollinate our fruit trees, help break down waste, and are sources of food for other animals. Unfortunately, we have yet to fully identify, describe, or understand the biology of insects."

There are believed to be more than 1.5 million identified species of insects on Earth. This is hypothesized to be three times the number of all other animal species combined. Amazingly, it is estimated that there are 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) insects alive in the world. That's more than one billion times the number of people.

"We share the planet with so many insects, wouldn't it be wonderful if when we find a new one in our backyard we could take a picture of it and have that matched to an image in a museum somewhere. We could learn the name, understand what its role in the ecosystem is, or understand if it is an invasive species that might devastate our garden or nearby crop fields," said Norman Johnson, director of the Triplehorn Insect Collection at The Ohio State University, and the chairman of the planning committee that established the rules for the competition.

For more than 250 years, scientists have collected millions of insects from around the world. These specimens are now held in more than 1,000 natural science collections in universities and museums across the United States alone. Unfortunately, many of these specimens remain unknown to science, education, natural resource and public health managers and the general public. Quite simply, they have been locked away in cabinets.

"With technological advances in robotics, imaging, data capture and management, among other areas, it is now possible to develop new tools to digitally capture images of insect specimens and their associated data," said Johnson.

"This is important work that is going to solve some persistent challenges, advance science and engineering and is also likely to generate new tools that may have secondary commercial applications," said Olds.

Through the Advancing Digitization of Biological Collections program, NSF has pledged $100 million over ten years to support biodiversity collections research.

Other fields of biology have made progress digitizing specimens and sharing the data with research, education, and other user communities. Plant scientists, for example, have been developing innovative ways to image herbarium sheets. Despite these developments, insects have remained a challenge.

"We need to find a way to move from two-dimensional to three-dimensional images." Johnson said.

Insects are delicate and have small labels associated with them that have information about the specimen, such as its name and where it was collected. "These specimens and their associated data provide irreplaceable information about the history and nature of life on Earth, but it is not easy to capture this data in a cost-effective way that does not damage the specimen or label. We need a creative solution that will solve this problem," said Johnson.

"AIBS is pleased to partner with NSF on this endeavor," said Travis. "This is a unique opportunity to move science and technology forward with a leap instead of a small step."

Official contest rules and guidance are available at beyondthebox.aibs.org. Questions about the contest must be submitted through the website, where the questions and answers will be posted.

The contest opened on Dec. 5 and will close on Sept. 4, 2015 EST at 11:59 p.m. A winner will be selected following a competitive judging process and on-site demonstration by the finalists.

-NSF-

Media Contacts
Lily Whiteman, National Science Foundation, (703) 292-8310, email: lwhiteman@nsf.gov
Robert Gropp, American Institute of Biological Sciences, (202) 628-1500, email: rgropp@aibs.org

Program Contacts
Anne Maglia, National Science Foundation, (703) 292-7380, email: amaglia@nsf.gov

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

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