This Pan-American Advanced Studies Institutes (PASI) award, jointly supported by the NSF and the Department of Energy (DOE), will take place early May 2008 in the Tambopata National Reserve, Peru. Organized by Dr. Jorge Vivanco of Colorado State University, the PASI will involve lectures, mini-symposia about new laboratory and field techniques, and brainstorming sessions to promote interactions between group leaders doing cutting-edge research in various aspects of tropical ecology, and post-doctoral scientists and advanced doctoral students from across the Americas. The PASI will disseminate recent interdisciplinary advances in ecology, plant biochemistry, evolutionary biology, genomics and chemical ecology.
This PASI aims to educate a corps of young biologists from all over the Americas with the cutting-edge tools they need to prosper in their field, as well as to help them establish fruitful collaborations with other Western-Hemisphere biologists. Ultimately, it will expose participants to the complexity of the rainforest and the potential chemical and microbial dimensions of biodiversity, through modern techniques that can be used to analyze field studies at the molecular level.
