Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Informatics are sponsored jointly by the Directorates for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and Biological Sciences (BIO) to encourage research and training that cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries between them. These fellowships provide opportunities for interdisciplinary research and educational activities in biology and informatics to a wide range of recent doctoral recipients (biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and others). It is expected that the Fellows trained through these fellowships will play an important role in training the future workforce. Postdoctoral research and training in informatics will permit junior scientists trained in biology, mathematical, chemical, and physical sciences to play key roles in developing new quantitative tools and methods that will advance informatics in biology and other fields.
The research and training plan is entitled "A population genomics approach to studying selection on regulatory sequences." Many computational, statistical, and theoretical tools necessary to investigate selection on whole genomes in a population genetic framework are not yet available. This study extends previous computational work on selection throughout unicellular genomes against spurious transcription factor binding sites by developing the informatic tools needed to study selection on eukaryotic genomes.
