Teams of faculty mentors from biological sciences and mathematical sciences are working with groups of undergraduate majors in biology and mathematics on projects stemming from four research themes: Biomolecular Sequence Analysis, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Gene Expression and Proteomics Data Analysis, and Protein Structure Prediction. Faculty members and students from both the biological and mathematical sciences are also bringing about changes in the undergraduate curricula of both disciplines. This includes modifications in the contents of a number of biology and mathematics courses and establishing new bioinformatics undergraduate courses, which will be the foundation for graduate degree studies in bioinformatics.
Intellectual Merits: In addition to the mathematical and scientific contributions directly resulting from the research projects, this training program develops an interactive investigative approach that combines rigorous mathematical methods, current computing technology, and careful experimental verification together in research endeavors. The validation of prediction results by wet-lab experiments will encourage experimental scientists to make use of mathematical concepts and computational methodology with confidence to assist their scientific pursuits.
Broader impacts: At a minority-serving institution with over 70% Hispanic students, the faculty investigators leading this project serve as mentors and role models to encourage more woman and minority students to engage in interdisciplinary scientific research. The faculty investigators also form a consortium for exchanging information and knowledge for research and education, and they integrate parts of this research in their teaching. For the participating students, this project provides collaborative interactions and research training that personalizes their educational experiences.
This project is partially supported by funds from the Directorate for Biological Sciences.
