The Biodiversity Synthesis Center was the Field Museum's part of the Encyclopedia of Life, the international effort launched in 2007 to put information about every known species online. The center ran synthesis meetings, gave scientists from different institutions a place to collaborate, and turned scattered biodiversity records into data, publications, and software, in work that ran from phylogenetics and biogeography through data mining to bio-semantics.
I worked on the center's website, a Drupal 6 build that was already in place when I arrived. I developed on it, maintained it, fixed what broke, and gave day-to-day technical support to the scientific and administrative staff as the center's programs grew: PHP, contributed modules, content types, and themes.
The group was small and mixed, with biological research, scientific programming, education, illustration, and administration in the same room.
The center was directed by Mark Westneat
Mark WestneatProfessor of organismal biology and anatomy at the University of Chicago, working on the evolution and biomechanics of fishes. Formerly chair of zoology and director of the Biodiversity Synthesis Center at the Field Museum.LinkedIn ↗, then Curator of Zoology and the author of JackTaxa.