2015 Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics Conference: Using Biodiversity to Explore Biocomplexity; University of New England, Biddeford, ME; July 12-17, 2015

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How organisms and ecosystems respond to changing environments remains an important question of basic and applied research. This award will provide travel support for students and faculty to the 2015 Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics Gordon Research Conference (EEG GRC). EEG is a new but growing field with central importance to major scientific questions and emerging problems facing humanity. EEG brings together disparate disciplines and utilizes biological diversity to understand complex processes. The EEG GRC is the premiere meeting of this field, and brings together leaders, rising stars, postdocs, and graduate students in an intimate highly interactive environment, which is a hallmark of GRC meetings. The theme of this meeting is "Using Biodiversity to Explore Biocomplexity", which emphasizes how genome science is being expanded from traditional "model" species to encompass biologically diverse organisms, and how this can be used to advance our understanding of the complicated relationships between organisms and the environment. A major goal of this work is to broaden participation at the EEG GRC. This will be achieved through recruitment of students and faculty from groups usually underrepresented in science, providing registration and travel costs for ten individuals that will increase diversity among the participants. In addition to broadening participation, the proposal will fund travel and registration costs for speakers presenting advances in computational and genomic approaches to previously not well-studied organisms and ecosystems, and funds for students and young investigators who are driving this research. Results from this EEG GRC will advance a better understanding of the relationships between biodiversity and biocomplexity, and will impact society by increasing the understanding of how organisms adapt to changing environments.The intellectual merit of the EEG GRC is to address the unique computational challenges presented by the genomic analyses of diverse organisms requiring the development of new tools, databases and algorithms to help the understanding of biodiversity. Funds will be used to cover the travel costs for seven speakers in two symposia, "Advances in Computational and Genomic Approaches in Non-Model Organisms", and "Networks: From Genes to Ecosystems", and support for four individuals to be selected from submitted abstracts in the "Young Investigators: Advances in Ecological and Evolutionary Genomics" symposium. The broader impacts include the major goal of facilitating efforts to broaden participation at the EEG GRC. This will be achieved through recruitment efforts using a variety of mechanisms that will seek to bring the EEG GRC to the attention of students and faculty from groups underrepresented in science and provide registration and travel costs for ten of these individuals. Funds will also be used to support the participation of two outstanding High School educators with records in science outreach and curriculum development who can bring this cutting edge research to the high school classroom.