Fred Fox - University of California at Los Angeles IGERT: Training Program in Bioinformatics
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research in bioinformatics. As part of a major new bioinformatics initiative at UCLA, the IGERT bioinformatics program will provide rigorous training for Ph.D. candidates in thirteen participating departments, supporting them with tools for creating robust new bioinformatics applications. It also will engage undergraduates from UCLA and feeder institutions in summer research internships and support accelerated bioinformatics training that can bypass the baccalaureate and proceed directly from undergraduate admittance to an advanced degree. IGERT trainees will satisfy all major subject area requirements of their Ph.D.-granting departments and also the core components of the newly established, certificate-granting interdepartmental program in bioinformatics. This core consists of courses in genomics and bioinformatics, statistical methods in computational biology, and a weekly seminar in which students and faculty discuss specific examples of how biological problems map to are solved by approaches from multiple disciplines. The interdepartmental program also requires a subject area minor in molecular life science for trainees in computer science, mathematics and statistics; trainees in life sciences must satisfy a minor in mathematics-statistics or computer science. IGERT trainees will work in matrix environments that force regular, collaborative contacts; these are provided by the Keck Foundation-supported Bioinformatics User Centers adjacent to the UCLA-DOE Macromolecular Structure Laboratories and the Human Genetics core DNA sequencing and microarray facilities. The User Centers can be made available to visitors who wish to apply powerful, integrated bioinformatics approaches in their research. The UCLA-IGERT bioinformatics program will develop a proactive industry liaison that contributes to programmatic vision, helps test the preparedness of trainees in private sector challenges and provides networking support. The IGERT program will also collaborate with the UCLA-based, NSF-sponsored national Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics in seminars and conferences that help define the evolution of bioinformatics as a fundamental discipline.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing new, innovative models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the third year of the program, awards are being made to nineteen institutions for programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. The intellectual foci of this specific award reside in the Directorates for Biological Sciences, Computer and Information Science and Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, and Education and Human Resources.
