The National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) was established to promote interactions between scientists and facilitate the use of existing information to address important ecological questions. The center supports several types of activities involving Working Groups (20 or fewer scientists meeting for several days, multiple times a year), Center Fellows (sabbatical visitors), Postdoctoral Associates, and graduate and undergraduate students. The vision for NCEAS has been to catalyze a new culture of synthesis. The NCEAS model for collaboration has been particularly successful with 1) interdisciplinary syntheses that bring together people who have not collaborated before to focus on novel questions and approaches and 2) intensive, sustained investigations to make progress in core areas of ecology. This award will support NCEAS operations for an additional six years, enabling it to serve the ecological community by cultivating a new generation of ecologists who merge interdisciplinary interactions, intensive analysis or modeling, and the technology and culture of information management with their inherent intellectual curiosity and commitment to yield important, scholarly research.
