NRT-URoL: Synthesizing Biology Across Scales – A Convergent Synthetic Biology Training Program

合成生物学是一门新兴学科，它正在为从可持续来源合成燃料、食品和材料、制造治疗疾病的智能药物以及实现全球环境管理产生创新。因此，合成生物学有很大的潜力触及我们日常生活的几乎每一个方面。鉴于合成生物学对造福社会的承诺，我们越来越需要更好地理解生命的规则，我们可以通过这些规则来设计生物学，并发展一支多样化的、受过合成生物学训练的、具有创业精神的劳动力队伍。今天，合成生物学的概念主要是在传统的学科界限内教授的，这为跨学科的概念协同创造了障碍，而跨学科的概念协同可能会导致对生物学的更深层次的理解，并为社会带来更多的突破性创新。这项授予西北大学合成生物学中心的国家科学基金会研究培训（NRT）奖将通过使用一种新的合成生物学培训模式来培训研究生，从而打破这些障碍，这种模式特别跨越了学科界限。该项目预计将培养145名博士生，包括17名受资助的博士生，他们来自应用数学、生物学、生物医学工程、化学工程、土木和环境工程以及医学学位课程。本培训计划的指导理念是通过综合方法理解生命规则（url）：学生将学习跨越长度和时间尺度的生命系统原理-从分子到细胞，到生物体，到社区-然后通过论文研究跨越这些尺度之间的界面来证明这种理解。这个培训项目本质上是趋同的。通过整合跨学科的概念（如生物学、工程学、数学、数据科学），该项目将有助于开发合成生物学培训的核心课程。培训计划包括：(i)课程开发，按比例介绍核心生物学原理；（ii）技能工作坊，培养学生在沟通、计算机编程和实验设计方面的核心能力；（iii）教育、创业和政策方面的体验项目，帮助学生将他们的培训转化为更广泛的社会影响；将道德考虑纳入每一组成部分；（五）共同指导的论文研究，使学生能够在不同生物尺度的界面上工作。该项目的主要目标是为合成生物学培训创建核心课程，培训合成生物学家与不同的社会利益相关者交流科学思想，增加合成生物学劳动力，扩大妇女、代表性不足的少数民族和残疾人的参与，并建立基础设施以维持创新的合成生物学生态系统。美国国家科学基金会研究实习生（NRT）计划旨在鼓励开发和实施大胆的、具有潜在变革性的STEM研究生教育培训新模式。该项目致力于通过创新、循证、适应不断变化的劳动力和研究需求的综合培训模式，在高优先级跨学科或融合研究领域对STEM研究生进行有效培训。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Synthetic biology is an emerging discipline that is generating innovations for synthesizing fuels, foods, and materials from sustainable sources, for building smart medicines to cure diseases, and for enabling global environmental stewardship. Thus, there is great potential for synthetic biology to touch almost every aspect of our daily lives. Given the promise of synthetic biology to benefit society, there is growing need to better understand the rules of life by which we may engineer biology, and to develop a diverse, synthetic biology-trained, entrepreneurial workforce. Today, synthetic biology concepts are primarily taught within traditional disciplinary boundaries, creating barriers to synergizing concepts across disciplines that could result in deeper understanding of biology and increased breakthrough innovations for society. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to the Center for Synthetic Biology at Northwestern University will break down these barriers by training graduate students using a new model for synthetic biology training, which specifically bridges disciplinary boundaries. This project anticipates training one hundred forty five (145) PhD students, including seventeen (17) funded trainees, from applied mathematics, biology, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, civil and environmental engineering, and medicine degree programs.The guiding concepts of this training program are focused on Understanding the Rules of Life (URoL) through a synthetic approach: students will learn the principles of living systems across length and time scales—from molecules, to cells, to organisms, to communities—and then demonstrate this understanding through thesis research spanning the interfaces between these scales. This training program is inherently convergent. By integrating concepts across disciplines (e.g., biology, engineering, mathematics, data science), the program will help develop a core curriculum for synthetic biology training. The training plan consists of: (i) curricular development that introduces core biological principles along scales; (ii) skills workshops that give students core competencies in communication, computer programming, and experimental design; (iii) an experiential project within education, entrepreneurship, and policy tracks that prepares students to translate their training to impact broader society; (iv) integration of ethical considerations throughout each component; and (v) co-mentored thesis research that prepares students to work at the interface of different biological scales. The primary objectives of the project are to create a core curriculum for synthetic biology training, train synthetic biologists to communicate scientific ideas to diverse societal stakeholders, grow the synthetic biology workforce, broaden participation of women, underrepresented minorities, and people with disabilities, and build infrastructure to sustain innovative synthetic biology ecosystem.The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.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.