The Belgian Biodiversity Platform and several key Biodiversity Informatics related partner institutes are pleased to invite you to the Conference “Empowering Biodiversity Research”, which will take place on May 21st 2015 in Brussels at the Palace of Academies. 

The conference will bring together representatives of national and international scientific institutes to explore and discuss the opportunities and strengths related to Biodiversity Informatics and Open Data. Three keynote speakers will start the day: 

1. Vince Smith, research leader in informatics at the Natural History Museum, London
2. Dr Hilde Eggermont, Scientific Coordinator at the Belgian Biodiversity Platform
3. Pieter Colpaert, Researcher at Open Knowledge Belgium

A series of lightning talks will also take place, explaining the state of research making use of biodiversity informatics tools in Belgium. In the afternoon we will showcase some state of the art related projects.

During the breaks, we will, in addition to coffee and sweets, have a poster session and a fair where you can find information and tools which can help you in your future research.

Biodiversity Informatics deals with the application of informatics techniques to biodiversity information for improved management, presentation, discovery, exploration and analysis of scientific data. Combined with open data sources on the Internet, this is a powerful new approach in doing research. An important aim of this conference is also to offer networking opportunities and foster debate among participants. Through your participation, you can help developing issues to be explored further by the project, and be fed into a series of dedicated workshops that will be organised after the conference.

For more information on program and registration (small registration fee of 10 euro) : http://www.biodiversity.be/conference2015/