The Video Bioinformatics Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) brings together expertise from engineering, information technology and life sciences to open new doors by enabling the study of continuous and dynamic biological processes in living systems that are captured live by video in real-life experiments. Traditionally, living systems have been studied as static images; scientists must infer the processes that produce growth, disease, healing, and death. The scientific community does not yet have a systematic way of examining moving biological images and understanding their dynamics. This IGERT addresses the need by bringing experts from widely divergent backgrounds and by integrating multiple imaging modalities with computational techniques for video data mining, knowledge discovery and visualization. Each student will participate in an intensive summer workshop before the first year of graduate study. A new interdisciplinary curriculum will train the next generation of engineers and scientists to solve old and new biological and computational problems. Information technology students will learn about the unique needs of studying living systems, and develop methods to enhance the study of these systems. Students in the life sciences will learn how to develop and apply effective computing techniques to dynamic biological problems. Interdisciplinary project-oriented team-taught courses and group projects are important educational elements. The program provides continuous mentoring, teaching and leadership opportunities, internship in industry or government, weekly seminars, yearly retreats, and workshops on ethics and communication skills. The program will aggressively recruit students from groups underrepresented in science and engineering. The research impacts a large number of fields where one must analyze massive video datasets and need highly efficient and effective ways to retrieve information. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.
