This award provides support for a two-week Environmental Biotechnology course to be held from May 24th to June 7th, 2009 at the University of Oklahoma. The course is open to early career scholars who have training in molecular microbiology and/or microbial ecology and who want to apply those skills to solving environmental problems. The course is designed to provide hands-on experience in modern biotechnological methods for the analysis of microbes and their metabolic activities that are essential for the remediation of polluted environments. The course will focus instructional efforts on an alluvial aquifer contaminated by a now closed municipal landfill. This national research site provides an excellent opportunity to study the spatial and temporal variability associated with various biogeochemical processes and samples from the aquifer will be used to investigate the metabolic fate of contaminants under defined ecological conditions. In order to accomplish these goals, the course is structured to include a mixture of field- and laboratory-related exercises. In the laboratory, the students will learn through a combination of practical lectures, hands-on exercises that introduce the techniques of molecular biology as applied to environmental matrices, and one-on-one consultation with distinguished experts in the field of environmental microbiology and biotechnology.
The course will cover an array of chemical, microbiological, and molecular techniques for the analyses of soils, sediments and waters. Formal instruction and laboratory activities will be augmented by seminars from distinguished scientists who will cover a research area related to what the students are doing in the course. These scientists will also interact with the students outside the classroom environment to promote discussions and learning in less formal situations. Lastly, the project will have substantive broader impacts. One of the central tenets of the project is to bring together young scientists in a forum that will set the groundwork for future collaborative interactions. The effort is to differentially select the finest next generation scholars, equip them with the requisite training and skills, so that their common scientific background will allow them to collaborate on future environmental problems. In addition, they will pass this information on to their charges when they are in future influential positions. There will be no doubt that the biotechnological techniques and ecological lessons learned in the course will be readily extrapolated to other ecosystems across the globe.
