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SciLink was the subject of a feature article on Bio-IT World.com.
SciLink
A question was posed: Is there a way to keep the scientific community connected, informed, and enthusiastic about upcoming events and projects? The answer was SciLink, a professional networking website expressly tailored to the specialized needs of its target population. SciLink's purpose would be to help encourage global communication, coordination and collaboration within the scientific community.
Because of its detailed organizational structure, the SciLink project required a great deal of flexibility from Synthesis. SciLink utilizes a lot of high technology - from Flex, Java, Hibernate, Spring and Lucene to Bayesian learning networks and graph layout algorithms. Because of this, the engineering team was frequently called upon to shift gears on a moment's notice. SciLink is based upon a very distinct concept, creating many inherent challenges such as determining the best way to construct key parts of customer interaction. This became part of the Synthesis mission: to design the ideal user experience.
Currently, the SciLink database successfully links 5.8 million scientists and 14 million scientific articles via the "Tree of Science," a Synthesis-created feature that captures user-relations. SciLink also goes beyond existing social networks with its proprietary Phoenix engine, a platform for suggesting content using Bayesian machine learning techniques. With it, SciLink alerts its users to new publications, authors and grants custom tailored to their interests.
To help the community grow, Synthesis is constantly putting improvements into action.