The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is awarded a grant to develop a training program, "Sustaining Biological Infrastructure: Strategies for Success", to provide directors of biological research infrastructure projects with training in strategic business planning, marketing, and communication. Successful biological research relies on access to a wide range of supporting infrastructure resources, including databases, living stocks collections, museum collections, and field stations. These resources in turn require informed planning to maintain their long-term financial sustainability and capacity to innovate to meet the research community's constantly changing needs. The intellectual merit of this program, which will conduct an annual training workshop for three years, consists in providing research infrastructure directors with the skills they need to integrate long-term financial sustainability and innovation into their management and continuing development of these essential resources.
Biological research, including research in fields of direct societal relevance such as agriculture, genetics, environmental science, and human diseases, depends on infrastructure. Examples of this infrastructure include collections of living organisms with documented provenance and genetic histories, data repositories with information about gene sequences and protein structures, and field stations with environmental monitoring equipment. Directors of these resources need in-depth knowledge of strategic business planning to ensure the long-term sustainability of infrastructure vital to scientific development and innovation. Workshop organizers will encourage participation by a wide range of scientists, including those from groups underrepresented in science, and participants will have the opportunity to exchange information about their challenges and experiences, successes and failures. The broader impacts of this program thus lie in its contribution to the long-term sustainability of biological research and to the development of a community of scientist-program directors who can in turn pass along their new knowledge to the next generation of scientists. Additional information about this workshop will be made available in the "Science Programs" section of ESA's website, www.esa.org.
