About iBioSeminars	Download Poster
Modern biology is advancing at a staggering pace, and it is critical for students and researchers from the US and around the world (small colleges and large) to have access to outstanding seminars that describe exciting advances in biology. However, many institutions have difficulty in accessing top scientists for their seminar series, due to a lack of travel funds as well as the limited travel time of speakers. Thus, there is a need for world-wide access to lectures by leading scientists. iBioSeminars® is a freely available library of seminars from outstanding scientists. Our mission is to host lectures that describe on-going research in leading laboratories (they are not basic, survey-style lectures as might be found in undergraduate or graduate student biology courses). However, iBioSeminars features a more extensive introduction into the subject matter than a typical 50 min university seminar. Thus, these lectures are intended to be more accessible than many typical department seminars to advanced undergraduates/beginning graduate students and researchers outside of the specific field. The lectures are divided into two or three segments, which can be downloaded separately. Some segments are crafted as more basic introductions (usually the first), others explore a particular research topic, and some segments provide a perspective of the field and where it is going. As is true of any seminar, each speaker has their own style of how they present their material. The biggest challenge for a www seminar is transmitting the "human element", which makes a seminar so different from reading lecture notes. To engage the viewer, we employed a technique used in the broadcast industry called "chroma key" or bluescreen", in which a speaker is superimposed upon another digital media (the weather person in the news often uses this technique). For iBioSeminars (which are taped in a studio at UCSF and edited), the speaker is superimposed and interacting with the material on his/her PowerPoint slides, creating what we hope will be an enjoyable format for viewers. The lectures can be accessed "on-demand" by: 1) www streaming, 2) after download onto a personal computer in lower and higher resolution formats, or 3) after download onto a video iPod or iPhone. Lectures also can be downloaded free through iTunes U. The lectures can be used in different ways. Individuals (depending upon their computer resources) can view the lectures either at work, at home, or even while commuting on a train. Teachers may wish to use segments of these lectures in a classroom (ie. with a LCD projector) or assign a lecture for students to view on their own time. For teachers/students, the lecturers have included their powerpoints (in pdf format) as well as references that can be used as assigned reading. The Future of iBioSeminars We will expanded iBioSeminars to 33 lectures in September 2008. We intend to continue to add seminars of this quality on a regular basis in the future, so that there will be 20 new seminars added per year. Pending funding, we hope to make foreign language translations (see test Spanish subtitles for David Baltimore which can be accessed on this site) and have a mechanism for distributing DVDs to institutions with poor internet access. We also are investigating formats in which the www audience might ask questions regarding the talk and then having the questions/answers posted. Dissemination is critical for the success of this project, so please pass along information and the iBioSeminars web link to colleagues, both local and in other countries. If you found this project useful and believe that it should be continued/expanded, please submit your comments using the feedback interface on this www site. If you have suggestions for improvement, we also would be very interested in hearing from you.