RCN: Coral Bleaching Research Coordination Network

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Researchers at the National Science Foundation U.S. Investigator Workshop on Coral Bleaching in 2016 determined that advancing coral bleaching research required new efficiencies in research and sample archiving methods across a large multi-disciplinary network in order to facilitate comparisons among studies and reduce the time to discovery. It was determined that a Coral Bleaching Research Coordination Network (Coral Bleaching RCN) was the most effective way of addressing this problem. The goals of this Coral Bleaching RCN are to 1) develop experimental design, sample archiving, and data synthesis protocols, through three workshops and 2) facilitate the formation of interdisciplinary collaborative teams. Workshop findings will be disseminated through live cyber-seminars, publications, conference presentations, and archived on the Coral Bleaching RCN website. To foster interdisciplinary training of early career scientists, an Early Career Training program will make available, on a competitive basis, funds for individuals to spend time in another lab to learn new skills, methods, or analytical approaches, thus furthering interdisciplinary training. Two graduate students and sixteen early career scientists will be supported by this grant. Efforts will be made to select a diverse group of individuals for the workshops and early career program, with representation across gender, race, and country of origin, as well as research expertise. Diversity among career stages will also be considered for workshop participants. The Steering Committee members include two women and one individual from a historically underrepresented group with research expertise ranging from geochemistry to ecology to genomics.The goals of this Coral Bleaching RCN are to 1) develop experimental design, sample archiving, and data synthesis protocols, through three workshops and 2) facilitate the formation of interdisciplinary collaborative teams. These goals will be addressed through four activity nodes: workshops, cyberseminars, student and Early Career Training, and RCN activity dissemination. The workshops will be the centerpiece of the Coral Bleaching RCN and focus on three topics: 1) experimental design protocol recommendations, 2) sample archiving protocol recommendations, and 3) data assimilation protocol recommendations. The first two days of each workshop will focus on developing the protocol recommendations. The last day of each workshop will focus on building and/or expanding interdisciplinary collaborative research teams. Each workshop will consist of 27 participants (5 Steering Committee members, 2 graduate students, 10 invited participants, and 10 selected participants through a competitive application process). This strategy will allow for a large number of individuals to participate in one or more workshop(s). Pre- and post-workshop activities will ensure active participation of all parties and allow for ongoing improvement to the workshop workflow. The outcomes of the workshops will help to guide coral bleaching research by enhancing research efficiency, the rate of discovery, the capacity for multi-study comparisons, and stimulating new and unique collaborations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.