University of Washington (UW) is planning to join the existing multi-university Industry/University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) entitled "The Center for Advanced Forestry Systems" (CAFS) which was established in 2007 with four member institutions: North Carolina State University (lead university), Oregon State University, Purdue University and Virginia Tech.
UW expertise and proposed projects will expand and complement the areas of managing plantation site resources; measuring and monitoring their growth, yield and quality response with remote sensing; developing improved growth and yield and wood quality prediction models; and improving landscape-level decision support systems. The proposed activities at UW will augment current CAFS projects, and will more fully address the needs for scientific and technological advances for enhancing the competitiveness of the US forestry sector.
The effort at UW has the potential to improve the competitiveness of the forest products industry by solving key problems using applied research and enhanced institutional collaboration. Members will benefit by becoming knowledgeable about a wider range of technological capabilities. Technology transfer will be facilitated by direct interactions between the scientist of member academic institutions forest sector members, refereed publications and presentations at scientific meetings, and training of graduate and under-graduate students. Aggressive recruiting for graduate students among under-represented groups will be conducted, increasing the diversity of the workforce for both academia and industry. The diversity promoting activities are part of the UW's overall commitment to and plan for increasing diversity.
