This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award will support the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program in Nonlinear Systems that emphasizes common mathematical and theoretical ideas that find expression in the analysis of natural and engineering systems. This activity is a joint effort of thirty-six scientists and engineers from the Departments of Aerospace Engineering, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, Applied and Engineering Physics, Biometry, Chemical Engineering, Economics, Electrical Engineering, Geological Sciences, Management, Mathematics, Mechanical Engineering, Neurobiology and Behavior, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering, Physics, Physiology, and Theoretical and Applied Mechanics at Cornell University. Joining them are scientists, engineers, and business scholars from Morgan Stanley, SUNY Health Science Center, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, Hewlett-Packard, and the Boyce-Thompson Institute. Members of this group of scholars have established research collaborations; their collective expertise will provide the intellectual underpinning for the training of a diverse cadre of some sixty graduate students over the five-year tenure of the award. Doctoral students in this IGERT activity will be admitted to one of Cornell's existing Graduate Fields and will take an integrated two-semester course in nonlinear science that includes both deterministic and stochastic mathematical methods, and explore applications in various disciplines. These students must also complete the PhD requirements in their respective fields, take a minor in a different field, attend weekly colloquia and seminars, and complete a summer internship in a laboratory, hospital, Wall Street firm, or industrial setting as appropriate. The goal of the program is to educate students to be fluent in several disciplines and theoretical methodologies, all of which bear on the theme of nonlinear phenomena. IGERT is a new, NSF-wide program intended to facilitate the establishment of innovative, research-based graduate programs that will train a diverse group of scientists and engineers to be well-prepared to take advantage of a broad spectrum of career options. IGERT provides doctoral institutions with an opportunity to develop new, well-focussed multidisciplinary graduate programs that transcend organizational boundaries and unite faculty from several departments or institutions to establish a highly interactive, collaborative environment for both training and research. In this first year of the program, support will be provided to seventeen institutions for new or nascent programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.
