IGERT Full Proposal: Integrative Human Evolutionary Biology

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9987590Bernard Wood - George Washington UniversityIGERT: Integrative Human Evolutionary BiologyThis Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary, multi-institutional, graduate training program of education and research on human evolutionary biology. The Human Evolutionary Biology Doctoral Program (HEBDP) is a graduate program linking anthropology with molecular and organismal biology, chemistry, engineering and geology that promotes interdisciplinary research emphasizing experimental and comparative methods for studying human evolutionary history. HEBDP is a collaboration between George Washington University, Howard University, the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, and other Washington DC area researchers. The evidence for our species' evolutionary history is well studied and of unquestionable social and scientific importance. Yet, despite a wealth of fossil, archaeological, molecular, paleoecological and comparative data, issues as basic as hominid phylogeny, the evolution of bipedal locomotion, diet, language and cognition, and the effects of environmental change on human evolution, and vice versa, remain poorly understood. These gaps in our knowledge partly occur because few students are trained in the new range of analytical, experimental and conceptual skills needed to test evolutionary hypotheses. HEBDP will combine coursework with innovative problem-based learning seminars, internships and research to train students in new methods for studying our species' fossil, archaeological and genetic records. Because human evolutionary research has broad social and medical implications, HEBDP includes training in skills required for the effective public dissemination of science. 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 Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences; Biological Sciences; Mathematical and Physical Sciences; Engineering; Geosciences; and Education and Human Resources.