Nobel
laureate, first-time institutions among 18 NSF IGERT awards for 2012
The National Science Foundation's
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program
announces 18 new awards to develop transformative interdisciplinary research
and training programs for Ph.D. students at institutions across the country.
Among the new principal investigators is Thomas Cech, a University of Colorado,
Boulder, professor and winner of the 1989 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In addition
to the 123 institutions that have hosted an IGERT to date, the program welcomes
five new institutions: Tulane University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute,
University of Connecticut, West Virginia University and the University of
Vermont.
In keeping with the IGERT program's
community-driven, cutting-edge research at the interfaces of disciplines, this
year's awards tackle critical national priority research areas that require
interdisciplinary approaches. From Big Data to biofabrication, advanced
manufacturing to nanotechnology, energy to sustainability, 18 IGERT PIs,
hundreds of faculty, and more than 400 Ph.D. students will collaborate across
disciplines to solve the world's toughest research problems.
Complementary projects at Penn State and
Columbia University will investigate the technical, social, legal and ethical
considerations associated with the world's growing collection of data.
Professor of Computer Science Julia Hirschberg at Columbia is bringing together
an impressive group of researchers to better extract knowledge and information
from text, audio and video data. At Penn State, Professor of Political Science
Burt Monroe and colleagues are aiming to understand the social contexts and
behaviors behind collected data, and advance social science research, by
developing the next generation of researchers with technical and theoretical expertise.
At Purdue University, PI Carol
Handwerker and her team of engineers, physical scientists and social
scientists, are aiming to solve the greatest challenges in creating sustainable
electronics. With the United Nations estimating that e-waste will grow globally
by 40 million tons each year, the IGERT team hopes to partner with industry to
produce talented and capable leaders to holistically approach a sustainable
life-cycle process in the manufacturing, shipping, consumption and disposal of
computers, mobile devices and appliances.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to
meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the
interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the
technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of
the future. The program is intended to establish new models for graduate
education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that
transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries, and to engage students in
understanding the processes by which research is translated to innovations for
societal benefit.
-NSF-
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