Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Informatics are sponsored jointly by the Directorates for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and Biological Sciences (BIO) to encourage research and training that cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries between them. These fellowships provide opportunities for interdisciplinary research and educational activities in biology and informatics to a wide range of recent doctoral recipients (biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and others) who seek to conduct research on biological questions using informatics tools and methods. It is expected that the Fellows trained through these fellowships will play an important role in training the future workforce. Postdoctoral training in informatics will permit junior scientists trained in biology, mathematical, chemical, and physical sciences to play key roles in developing new quantitative tools and methods that will advance informatics in biology and other fields.
The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Algorithms for motif recognition." This research is generating software for the recognition of promoter-transcription-factor binding sites and conserved patterns in protein sequences from microarray and genomic data. Identifying these sites can lead to the discovery of new transcription factors and co-regulated genes whereas discovering new conserved regions of proteins leads to new information on protein function and sites of interactions with other proteins and ligands.
