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 "Investigating the mechanosensory properties of insect antenna using neurophysiology and information theory." Insect antennae detect mechanical stimuli from their environment via a suite of mechanosensors spanning their basal antennal segments. Integrating techniques from neurophysiology, information theory and behavior, this research is characterizing the encoding properties of antennal mechanosensors and studying how insects process this information to differentiate between the reafferent and exafferent components of their stimulus environment.
