This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biology for FY 2018, Broadening Participation of Groups Under-represented in Biology. The fellowship supports a research and training plan for the Fellow that will increase the participation of groups underrepresented in biology. Males and females show differences in lifespan and aging within nearly every animal group. The reasons why this occurs is a major question in biology. This proposal will fund a fellow to receive training in molecular methods to assess aging physiology and will explore how differences between males and females may help explain differences in lifespan between them. To broaden participation of underrepresented groups in biology, the fellow is creating teacher training experiences around DataClassroom, a new software tool of his creation that was designed to teach data skills to students in grade 6-12 science classrooms. This professional development will help school districts serving large numbers of minority students to adopt technology and curricula that builds data skills as these skills increasingly become a prerequisite for scientific careers.
The fellow will use parallel longitudinal-studies in matched wild and lab populations of brown anole lizards (Anolis sagrei) to identify differences in longevity and rates of aging between male and female lizards, while also testing for differences in the fitness benefits of a long lifespan between males and females. This approach leverages long-term mark-recapture work in an island population of lizards where thousands of individuals have been longitudinally measured and tracked from hatching to death. The proposed work has three aims: (1) test if the relationship between age and fitness is fundamentally different for males and females, (2) test for differences in aging in a wild population using cellular and whole-organism biomarkers of aging, and for differences in selection on the reaction norm trait of aging, and (3) test the relative roles of environmentally mediated and genetic factors in any differences in the aging process. Broader impacts and broadening participation efforts are focused on increasing the capacity of science teachers in grades 6-12 to teach data skills and statistics in the science classroom. The fellow will plan and provide DataClassroom training for more than a hundred science teachers, serving thousands of minority students in both the Chicago Public Schools and a network of schools throughout the State of Alabama.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
