Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY 2006

这一行动为NSF 2006财年生物信息学博士后研究奖学金提供了资金。该奖学金支持生物学与信息科学、计算科学、数学科学和统计科学交叉的博士后水平的研究和培训。该研究金的目标是为一名青年科学家提供培训，为从事生物信息学的职业做准备，在生物信息学中将把研究和教育结合起来。各个职业层次对生物信息学的培训需求越来越大，预计通过这些奖学金培训的研究员将在培训未来的劳动力方面发挥重要作用。该奖学金的研究和培训计划题为《自然界中宿主和寄生虫的生态与联合进化》。这个项目是研究不同尺度的过程，从个体到景观，如何结合在一起来确定宿主-寄生虫的时空动态。它包括建立包含生态和进化过程的流行病学模型，然后将这些模型应用于两个不同的经验系统：牙蚤和真菌病原体，豌豆蚜虫和它们的寄生蜂ervi.培训目标是学习如何构建空间显式的时间序列模型，以及将这些模型与数据联系起来所需的统计技术。此外，这位研究员正在将她的专业知识扩展到陆地农业系统，为未来的研究提供更多样化的选择，并在一个面向本科生的生物-数学接口课程中提高教学技能。

This action funds an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Biological Informatics for FY 2006. 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 the future workforce.The research and training plan for this fellowship is entitled "The ecology and joint evolution of hosts and parasites in nature." This project is a study of how processes at different scales, from individuals to landscapes, combine to determine spatiotemporal host-parasite dynamics. It includes developing epidemiological models incorporating ecological and evolutionary processes and then applies these models to two different empirical systems: Daphnia dentifera and a fungal pathogen, and pea aphids and their parasitoid Aphidius ervi.The training goals are to learn how to construct spatially explicit time-series models and the statistical techniques necessary to link these models to data. Further, the Fellow is broadening her expertise to terrestrial agricultural systems, providing a greater diversity of options for future research, and improving teaching skills in a program for undergraduates at the biology-mathematics interface.