The science, engineering and outreach within this proposal all focus on Complex Systems Modeling for Environmental Problem Solving, and are of central importance to the State and region and integral to the State S&T Plan for Vermont. There are three main components: a research group in Biocomplexity; a Streams Project for Outreach to enhance science education enhancement, diversity and service to society; and outreach to the private sector through incentives for innovation. The University of Vermont (UVM) has considerable strength in modeling and computation with increasing momentum in complex systems modeling in ecology and evolution. UVM faculty have designed complex systems models for the analysis of invasive species, ground water, and evolutionary dynamics. Strategic investments by VT EPSCoR will bring these faculty members together and lead to an extremely strong collaborative and interdisciplinary Biocomplexity Group who focus on the environmental problems. The scientists and engineers in this group will develop new computational tools and creative models that are broadly applicable to complex systems even outside ecology, such as weather patterns or new materials. VT EPSCoR will implement a plan of resource investment to build the human and physical infrastructure for this talented group that will lead to important fundamental, collaborative, and innovative research. In addition to hardware, the group will receive the technical assistance necessary to foster world-class research, external consultants, mentoring, programmers, and networking. Graduate students and postdoctoral associates will be recruited to join the group. Together, VT EPSCoR and UVM will provide the necessary resources for building meritorious research in the area of Biocomplexity.
In addition to fundamental research, Biocomplexity Group members will work together to integrate existing and forthcoming datasets from research on the Lake Champlain watershed, and use complex systems to model these data. Not only will this unifying project result in broadly useful computational tools and tests of prototypes that identify gaps in data sets, but it will also create a single resource for analysis of very disparate datasets (e.g. phosphorous or nitrogen runoff, invasive species, algae blooms) and it will cultivate integration on a level never been achieved but critically important for the region. This project will have long-term impacts on land use management and the region's economy, including New York and the province of Québec. Some of the data sets will come from VT EPSCoR's educational and diversity outreach program called the ?Streams Project? which will collect and model data on Lake Champlain watershed streams. Thus both the research group and the outreach program for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education will contribute urgently needed information about the watershed that will be of immediate use to natural resource managers as they grapple with regulation and investment in the region. An important new impact of the Streams Project will be the targeted inclusion of the rural poor in addition to students under-represented in STEM careers. This proposal is designed to boost private-sector productivity by creating new incentives for innovative research and encouraging interaction among the private sector, the Biocomplexity Group and the Streams project. VT EPSCoR has made substantial progress in outreach for STEM education and diversity, and in private sector investments to promote Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) activity. VT EPSCoR proposes a new experiment to stimulate innovative research that will forward the goals of the new State S&T Plan. Similarly, the award winning STEM education and diversity outreach program has had an impact on teaching, student interest in STEM majors, and diversity among STEM students. A new assessment plan will measure progress in all these proposed projects against specific metrics.
– VT EPSCoR NSF EP#0701410 Key Accomplishments: Intellectual Merit: The overarching goal of the RII proposal was to build a new capacity in the State of Vermont in Complex Systems computation and modeling for environmental problem solving. We proposed to develop a group of scientists and engineers who would apply complex systems modeling to science questions about ecosystem structure and function as illustrated in the Lake Champlain basin. This group was the focus of our development of capacity in complex systems modeling for the State of Vermont. We have accomplished our goals of capacity building in that our scientists and engineers formed cohesive inter-disciplinary groups to model the extant data on the Lake and watershed. Groups comprised 9 CSYS faculty (4 female), 6 graduate students, (3 women), and one postdoctoral associate. The postdoctoral associate received a prestigious fellowship to attend the Complex Systems Summer School in San Carlos de Bariloche, Argentina, run by the Santa Fe Institute in 2008. They refined models and published their results. These investigators published one hundred and thirty papers and book chapters during the grant period, showing that they are very active and productive. Group members published 23 peer-reviewed papers (13 collaborative, 10 single author) that are attributable to CSYS research. Eleven PhD theses were completed based upon CSYS research. One PhD student was awarded a NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship award in 2010. Eight Patents were awarded and 2 new faculty were hired. The group members remain in contact and continue to publish together. In this regard, they remain a new capacity and resource for the state. To build capacity beyond our existing faculty strengths, we recruited three new faculty members who have expertise in hydrology and complex systems, lake food web, and climate science to join UVM and Vermont EPSCoR research. These faculty members add enormously to the research expertise and capacity in the state. All are participating in the current Track-1 research on adaptation to climate change in the Lake Champlain basin. Broader Impacts: Our goals for outreach to 12-16 education included a Streams Project that involved undergraduate and high school students and high school teachers in research in the streams of the Lake Champlain watershed. We applied complex systems analysis to data collected by the participants in the project. We broadened this integration of workforce development into research to the Watershed Project that reached further into other states with more diverse populations. Through these projects we inspired students to consider STEM careers and increased the diversity of the STEM workforce. In our five years, 70 high school teams from Vermont, the Bronx NY, Hartford CT, and Puerto Rico provided the samples. 67 Vermont and 31 Puerto Rican undergraduates analyzed samples and modeled data. Five liberal arts college faculty participated in the project. Rural poor students were supported by scholarships to attend the Governor’s Institutes of Vermont, a series of summer programs in Information Technology, Environmental Science, Math and Engineering. 135 need based scholarships from 2008-2011. We provided outreach to the private sector through SBIR Phase (0) awards that help to make small businesses competitive for federal SBIR awards. Through this successful program, we supported 32 awards amounting to $365,914 to 24 different small businesses. 20 Innovation Fund awards amounting to a total of $218,585 to 16 different individuals
