The physical and natural sciences often suffer from "benign neglect" in Latin American universities, says Tim DeVoogd, Cornell professor of psychology. To jump-start science throughout the hemisphere, DeVoogd is helping to create a new Web site where Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking scientists can interact, find funding opportunities and even trade equipment.

The site, CienciAmérica (Science of the Americas), will be developed and hosted at Galileo University in Guatemala, with material collected and formatted at Cornell. The project is funded for the first two years by a $65,000 grant from the U.S. Department of State.

Cyrano Ruiz Cabarrus, vice president of Galileo University, visited Cornell Oct. 27 and 28 to work out details and bring $15,000 of the grant to Cornell to hire a part-time person who will handle the detail work of organizing content for the site.

"Of course these countries need to put more funding into science, but the scientists need to be able to find it," said DeVoogd. The National Science Foundation makes it easy for American scientists to find funding opportunities and details about ongoing support by searching its Web site, he explained, but there is no similar opportunity on the sites of the comparable agencies in most Latin American countries.

The Web site will list grant opportunities, conferences, posters that members have presented at conferences, information about international scientific visitors and new initiatives coming out of Washington, D.C., or Latin American countries. Weekly articles will summarize the work of a member scientist or express opinions. A Craigslist-style feature will display training opportunities and equipment wanted or offered.

Galileo University emerged as the hub of the new project, DeVoogd said, because it is one of the newer institutions that is emphasizing science and engineering. Of the 40 or 50 universities he has visited, "Many older ones focused on law and social science and did not have top departments in physical or natural sciences," he said. "The most exciting were new, private universities with young people running them."

DeVoogd recently spent a year as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the State Department, traveling extensively to visit universities in Central and South America to help promote science and technology education and entrepreneurship. He lived in Mexico as a child and has many close relationships with Latin American scientists working in his field. He has worked to make science education accessible to students around the world; recently, he served as a consultant for the Asian University for Women in Bangladesh that will be dedicated to providing a first-tier liberal arts education for underprivileged women in South Asia.

In his research at Cornell, DeVoogd studies anatomical changes in the brain that are caused by and underlie learning, particularly in birds that learn complex songs or hide stashes of food.