Proposal Title: Wyoming NSF EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement
Institution: University of Wyoming
The Wyoming EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement award will build capacity and capability for national competitiveness in Natural Resource Sciences, especially emphasizing ecological topology of different spatial and time scales as it relates to ecosystem and global change: Currently, the university has 20 faculty members in diverse departments for this very broad, interdisciplinary area. The award will provide partial start-up support for five new hires to fill specific needed niches in a newly initiated interdisciplinary PhD program. Equipment and committed technical staff will be supported to enhance the Stable Isotope, Nucleic Acid Exploration, and GIS facilities, thereby strengthening research competitiveness and fostering additional collaborations in this research focus area and contributing to the development of a critical mass of research and educational expertise necessary for large, multi-investigator, competitive research programs. This focus relating to ecosystem responses to global change has significant current merit and importance both for Wyoming and, more broadly, for national and international concerns. There is growing recognition of the need for modeling and understanding ecological processes at different spatial scales. This project will provide a research and education focus related to that need for the university. More importantly, Wyoming's strength in geological studies will give added value in being able to address questions in different time scales as well as spatial scales. This perspective will be of particular value in informing policy decisions.
Integration of research and education will be emphasized in all aspects of the project. In the faculty recruitments researchers who are also excellent teachers will be sought to strengthen the new interdisciplinary PhD program. The award will supplement the university's level of graduate student stipends and this greater level of support will require that participating students take a course in Teaching for Scientists and Engineers. A different kind of graduate student support is to be provided for graduate student mentors for the Science Education program. Students receiving this mentorship support will assist secondary science education students in a summer research experience. Undergraduate fellowships for university and community college students will engage these students in research experiences. Outreach efforts will expand the number of high students participating in a previously successful summer research program. In addition, technical assistance will be engaged for efforts to increase public awareness of the role of research in higher education and its contribution to the state's economic growth and especially to make high school students and their parents more aware of undergraduate research opportunities.
Wyoming is a state with many precious natural resources that are critical to all aspects of our local, state and national economy. A major goal for science and technology advancement in Wyoming is to understand how to best manage these resources through understanding the ecology of Wyoming’s natural environment. The NSF EPSCoR award (0447681) helped achieve this goal by supporting research and education initiatives in the area of ecology and by bringing new and transformative infrastructure to the state through the flagship and only research institution, the University of Wyoming (UW). Infrastructure improvement focused in the area of ecosystem-level ecology. Ecosystems are defined as the community of plants, animals and microbes who all interact with each and with their physical environment. By understanding how these interactions occur and change, ecosystem scientists can better plan for the future and management of our natural resources. A major advance of the project was to expand the state’s research capabilities to include multiple levels of ecosystem study ranging from the very large (whole Earth level) to the very small (microscopic, molecular and DNA level). This multi-level interdisciplinary approach was a particularly exciting advance for the Wyoming people and scientific community because it occurred when the sequencing of whole genomes, which contain DNA information for all living organisms, was providing unprecedented information and tools to learn about how living organisms work and interact. Intellectual Merit. Infrastructure advances combined research and education in an integrated fashion so that scientists, students and the public were all positively impacted. Four major outcomes included the following: (1) Facilities were established or further supported to study DNA (the Nucleic Acid Exploration Facility), to provide large scale images of the landscape (the Wyoming Geographic Information Services Center) and to study the flow of molecules through an ecosystem (the Stable Isotope Facility). These three facilities are now permanent additions adding to the arsenal of tools for scientists to study and teach about multi-level ecosystem science; (2) New faculty were hired in interdisciplinary areas of ecological modeling, ecological genomics, ecological genetics and mathematical ecology. These faculty continue to teach and conduct research throughout the state; (3) High school, community college and undergraduate education was enhanced by the creation of new opportunities for hands-on research with faculty; (4) A new graduate Program in Ecology (PiE) was launched. This nationally significant program was a breakthrough in educational organization for UW: PiE spans three colleges, ten departments and has a current record enrollment of 48 Ph.D.-level students. Publication rate (450 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters) and funding success (over $20 million in competitive grants) is notable. A hallmark of this program is that it fosters a vibrant culture among ecologists in Wyoming and on the UW campus. New courses, seminar speakers, public presentations and important networking opportunities are supported each year. PiE students have been highly productive and a detailed website (www.uwyo.edu/pie) provides further information. Broader Impacts. From a research and training perspective, ecological and ecosystem advances have been remarkable because of the many connections among researchers, students and the public. In addition to the impact of the research on UW infrastructure described above, educational training has been significant. For example, students such as graduate student Zac Gompert worked with faculty member Alex Buerkle and secondary education major Lauren Lucas to study how butterfly wing patterns may influence butterfly interactions. This work involved understanding the DNA that conferred wing pattern, the mathematical distribution of the pattern of the wings and showed that these butterflies may be restricted in their ability to mate with each other and thus influence how new species emerge. Other faculty, such as Ecological Genomics professor Naomi Ward, mentored undergraduate students in her laboratory to study and understand how microbial genomes are distributed through the environment. These examples show the value of integrated research and educational approaches: many of these students have continued to become our future teachers, researchers, and members of a scientifically-literate public, thus highlighting the far reaching and broad impacts of programs of this type. More information is available at the Wyoming EPSCoR website at www.uwyo.edu/epscor/.
