News stories from MaNa projects

Distinguished Professor Brian Steffenson from the University of Minnesota visited GBIF Norway and the UiO NHN research group for Machine-Readable Nature (MaNa) from February to June 2026. 

Guest researcher visits by Martin Westgate from ALA in Australia and Fatima Parker-Allie from SANBI in South Africa

Vanessa Pitusi from UiT presented GBIF-OBIS Norway and the UiT Hosted Portal at the NatSCA (Natural Sciences Collections Association) conference, 8th and 9th May 2025, at the Manchester Museum, UK.

GBIF Norway Data Manager Rukaya Sarah Johaadien has won the GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge for the second year in a row. The Ebbe Nielsen 2025 1st prize was shared between Rukaya and colleagues from Australia.

The 3rd Bergen Bathysphere Science Symposium took place this week in Espegrend Marine Biological Station outside Bergen. Bathysphere gathers deep-sea scientists across disciplines, institutions and countries, creating a venue for sharing both knowledge and enthusiasm for the deep-sea.

GBIF Norway is proud to contribute to the development of the new DiSSCo MAS SpLAT service, supported by the GBIF CESP program, CESP2024-016: AI for Specimen Label. Read more about SpLAT here.

GBIF Norway has launched a co-funding call for 2025 to mobilize your species' occurrence data with preparation to ensure data quality before datasets are published in GBIF and the Norwegian Species Map (Artskart). Deadline June 15th, 2025.

Distributed System of Scientific Collections (DiSSCo) joins GBIF as the latest non-country associate organization from Europe (September 2019).

The GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is an annual incentive prize that seeks to inspire innovative applications of open-access biodiversity data by scientists, informaticians, data modelers, cartographers, and other experts.

The GBIF Graduate Researchers Award is an annual incentive prize that seeks to inspire innovative applications of open-access biodiversity data by scientists, informaticians, data modelers, cartographers, and other experts.

In March 2025, 12 new honorary ambassadors were recognized for their contributions to Oslo’s international conference scene. GBIF Norway and UiO NHMO MaNa received this award for the upcoming TDWG conference in Oslo in September 2026. The award was granted by Oslo Convention Bureau.

Norway is now part of OBIS. The new OBIS-GBIF Norway node is established as part of the Norwegian Participant node in GBIF.

GBIF Norway was represented at the Norwegian Symposium of Biosystematics in Oslo from 29th to 30th October.

We proudly announce that the 2024 Ebbe Nielsen Challenge winner is GBIF Norway Data Manager Rukaya Sarah Johaadien! The GBIF Ebbe Nielsen Challenge is the most prestigious GBIF award for innovative applications of open-access biodiversity data by scientists, informaticians, data modelers, cartographers, and other experts. Rukaya was recognized for her work on developing an AI chatbot pipeline to digitize and publish natural history specimens in GBIF.