This collaborative research project, consisting of four institutions (Rice, Yale, UIUC and Princeton) aims to continue the Physics of Living Systems Student Research Network (PoLS SRN). This network has been in existence for four years and has had a dramatic impact on many graduate students, both in the US and abroad, working on the application of physical science techniques to living systems. These students now can participate in a global community that can help deal with the many complex issues involved in conducting research in such a new and inherently multidisciplinary field. These issues range from proper training, to gaining a broad perspective, to accessing technical expertise that may not be available at their home institution. In addition to the obvious broader impacts related to training of a research workforce, there are other broad impacts of this plan. Via the interaction of one of the PoLS nodes (Rice) with the biomedical community in Houston, students and faculty will be exposed to possible avenues whereby physics can contribute to human health issues. Funds to attract students from under-represented groups to network meetings will be available through the new funds administered by the newly proposed network coordinator. Also deas vetted by the PoLS SRN will be adapted to create student networks in other areas of science and engineering.
There is by now little disagreement with the general notion that concepts and methods from physics have been a critical contributor to the increased understanding of the living world, and that its importance will be growing as the scientific world moves toward an ever more quantitative and predictive form of biology. Thus, the physics community clearly needs to train a new generation of scientists who can lead this effort, scientists who have the right mix of physics/mathematics rigor and broad knowledge of living systems from molecular scales on up. The PoLS SRN aims at creating a community of graduate students who can collectively help themselves and their mentors accelerate and enhance this training process. This is being done by a mix of in-person and virtual modes of communication, and this proposal is a plan to continue and expand these efforts; it will reach more students, improve the social networking portals, and make use of the complementary research agendas of the different network nodes to provide broad technical expertise. Doing all of this, will boost the intellectual level of the entire research field and convince the best students that the Physics of Living Systems is truly the most exciting research frontier in 21st century science.
This project is being jointly supported by the Physics of Living Systems program in the Division of Physics, the Molecular Biophysics Cluster in the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, the Chemistry of Life Processes program in the Division of Chemistry, and the Cellular Dynamics and Function Program in the Division of Integrative Organismal Systems.
