One successful strategy in pursuing the goal of a globally trained workforce relies on students' exposure to collaborative research between individual U.S. scientists and their counterparts in foreign countries. This often involves considerable efforts in faculty and student recruitment but is quite successful in providing students with an international experience, particularly with the more developed countries. This Americas Program award supports a novel approach to the creation of a globally diverse workforce, that may be more applicable to developing countries, by relying on the experience of the Consortium of the Americas for Interdisciplinary Science of the University of New Mexico to bring about enhanced and productive collaborations between scientists in the U.S. and scientists from Latin America. Through a strong interdisciplinary orientation and explicit linkages to education, the Consortium will provide a coordinated framework for international cooperation and student exchanges by encouraging short-term visits by outstanding Latin American researchers and their students to New Mexico, organizing international workshops in the US and in Latin America, and supporting collaborative research visits by US students and faculty to Latin America. Interdisciplinary networks and partnerships are expected to develop, abetted by the intellectual and cultural resources of the university and the national laboratories nearby, that will lead to more mature collaborations and exchanges of US students and faculty, supported under this grant, to centers and laboratories in Latin America.
Three research themes will be pursued: biologically relevant complex systems, novel materials, and nanoscale and mesoscale science. The proposed work will focus on bringing together physicists, biologists, chemists, mathematicians and engineers and their students from the Americas. The purpose is to gain insights into difficult and challenging problems that would not be solved without such a multidisciplinary approach. Research efforts will address the current explosion of interest in fundamental and applied aspects of biotechnology, and public health, including a basic and practical understanding of the spread of infectious diseases, of the formation and properties of biofilms, and of the dynamics of bacterial colonies. Investigators from the Americas with a variety of backgrounds will carry out research on processes at drastically different length scales, from the atomistic to the macroscopic. Novel materials such as self-assembled entities and granular compacts will be investigated. Problems that are important both because of their technological or human importance, and because of the inherent scientific challenges they pose, will be tackled. Interdisciplinary approaches to a fundamental understanding form the key element of the proposed collaborations and will guide student exchanges and their involvement in international activities.
