Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001

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This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY2001. The fellowship supports research and training at the postdoctoral level at the intersection of biology and the informational, computational, mathematical, and statistical sciences. The goal of the fellowship is to provide training to a young scientist in preparation for a career in biological informatics in which research and education will be integrated. There is an increasing need for training in biological informatics at all occupational levels, and it is expected that Fellows trained through these fellowships will play important roles in training of the future workforce.The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "Estimating global microbial diversity: A bioinformatics approach." Scaling law, probability and combinatorial theory are being used to quantify biodiversity patterns across a wide range of spatial scales and at different levels of phylogenetic resolution. Using computer intensive spatial statistical analyses and simulation modeling, hypotheses are being tested with a microbial genetic database two orders of magnitude larger than any previously reported (~73,000 16S rDNA clones collected over ~ 1 m2 to ~10,000 km2 in Australia, analyzed by RFLP and other sophisticated genetic techniques).