This is an award to support travel for a U.S. delegation of one senior and three junior scientists to a workshop on "Phenotypic and Developmental Plasticity," to be held in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, from December 16-20, 2007. The topic of the meeting is timely and highly appropriate to the current state of the field in developmental and organismal biology. The meeting brings together 50-55 scientists of highly disparate backgrounds in order to establish how to effectively approach and conceptualize the multifaceted problems in phenotypic and developmental plasticity. It is anticipated that general and common features of phenotypic and developmental plasticity across disciplinary boundaries will come to light as well as some discipline-specific aspects, and that collaborative efforts leading to future requests for research support from the National Science Foundation will be stimulated. The U.S. graduate students have been chosen for their research interests and activities in the areas of phenotypic and developmental plasticity and are expected to greatly benefit from intensive scientific discussion with an array of highly regarded, active, and internationally connected scientists and by publication of their research findings in the conference proceedings. This proposal is co-funded by the Evolution of Developmental Systems Program in the Division of Integrative and Organismal Systems and by the Office of International Science & Engineering.
