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，为制造治疗疾病的智能药物以及为实现全球环境管理而产生创新。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。鉴于合成生物学有望造福社会，我们越来越需要更好地了解我们可以设计生物学的生活规则，并培养多样化的、受过合成生物学训练的创业型劳动力。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，这为跨学科协同概念创造了障碍，这些概念可能会导致对生物学的更深入理解，并为社会带来更多的突破性创新。西北大学合成生物学中心的国家科学基金会研究培训（NRT）将通过使用合成生物学培训的新模式培训研究生来打破这些障碍，该模式专门弥合学科界限。该项目预计将培养一百四十五（145）名博士生，其中包括十七（17）名资助学员，来自应用数学，生物学，生物医学工程，化学工程，土木与环境工程和医学学位课程。该培训计划的指导思想集中在通过综合方法理解生命规则（URoL）：学生将学习跨越长度和时间尺度的生命系统的原理-从分子到细胞，到有机体，到社区-然后通过跨越这些尺度之间的接口的论文研究来展示这种理解。这个培训计划本质上是趋同的。通过整合跨学科的概念（例如，生物学，工程学，数学，数据科学），该计划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，沿着尺度引入核心生物学原理;（ii）技能讲习班，使学生具备沟通、计算机编程和实验设计方面的核心能力;（iii）教育、创业和政策轨道内的体验项目，使学生能够将其培训转化为影响更广泛社会的能力;（iv）在每个组成部分中纳入伦理考虑;以及（v）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创建合成生物学培训的核心课程，培训合成生物学家向不同的社会利益攸关方传达科学思想，发展合成生物学劳动力，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。NSF研究培训（NRT）该计划旨在鼓励为STEM研究生教育培训开发和实施大胆的，新的潜在变革模式。该计划致力于通过创新的、基于证据的、与不断变化的劳动力和研究需求相一致的综合培训模式，在高优先级的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NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力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.