[Plsfaculty] NSF Traineeship in Data Enabled Science

[Lambert, Georgina M - (glambert)]

On Behalf of Eric Lyons:


Dear Colleague,

The UA School of Information, the iPlant Collaborative, and BIO5 are preparing a proposal to establish a NSF National Research Traineeship (NRT) program in Data Enabled Science in the area of Sustainability. We deliberately have not defined sustainability yet to allow the broadest level of participation. We would like to invite you to join this proposal/program as a partner, benefitting through student training and financial support; additional details are outlined below.

I hope that you see a benefit in having your students trained in handling large and/or complex data sets, and that you will join the NRT as partner. Please let me know at your earliest convenience whether you are interested in this.

Feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.

Best,
Uwe

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Uwe Hilgert, Ph.D.
Director, STEM Training
BIO5 Institute & iPlant Collaborative
(o) 520-626-1367
(c) 516-857-1693
(e) hilgert at email.arizona.edu<mailto:hilgert at email.arizona.edu>


The UA NRT program will accomplish four objectives to support UA graduate student education:
1)         develop and teach a graduate curriculum in Data Sciences and Methodologies through the School of Information;
2)         offer students the choice of pursuing a graduate certificate in data-enabled science or an MS in Information in the course of obtaining a PhD in their home field;
3)         provide 1- or 2-year graduate traineeships, preferentially to students from populations underrepresented in the sciences (URM);
4)         engage NRT trainees in workforce readiness training, including paid industry internships, through collaborations with industry and other organizations.

NSF stipulates that funded programs fall under the priority theme of "Data-Enabled Science and Engineering." Under this super-header, participating trainees are required to conduct research in the context of an "overarching interdisciplinary research theme." Following preliminary conversations here at the UA, the overarching theme for the UA NRT will be "Sustainability." (Depending on the groups/departments who wish to partner, this could still morph into something more specific.)

Premier among resources for the program will be computational infrastructure including the UA HPC cluster and the iPlant Collaborative's cyberinfrastructure, as well as existing and new courses in data (incl. imaging, -omics, spatial & climate data) and workflow management, visualization, modeling, bioinformatics and statistics offered by a variety of different UA departments and schools.

We would like to invite you to join this program as a partner. This would provide you with access to a number of support mechanisms:
1)         assistance with recruiting graduate students;
2)         funding for graduate students who are NRT trainees;
3)         first-rate training for your students in managing and analyzing large and complex data that aligns with the meaning of data fluency in your distinct scientific field;
4)         partnering with a select group of faculty that prepares their students via the UA NRT program to excel as professionals in the data-rich science of the future.

Please let us know if you are interested in partnering with us for this NRT proposal. All we'd need would be an email saying that you wish to partner in the NRT, as well as a few ideas for graduate theses in your research area that could be used to exemplify potential grad research questions relating to "Sustainability."

Bryan Heidorn, School of Information
Catherine Brooks, School of Information
Uwe Hilgert, iPlant Collaborative


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