EDUCATION AND OUTREACH CORE

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EDUCATION AND OUTREACH CORE – SUMMARY The San Diego Center for Systems Biology conducts an array of recruitment, educational and outreach activities directed to enrich faculty, trainees, professional scientists and the general public. Specific goals are to attract and educate the next generation of systems biology scientists; to provide hands-on technical training in the generation and quantitative analysis of complex data sets; to impact the general public including pre-college education and under-represented minorities; to draw the quantitative sciences talent pool towards biology; and to build, enrich and inspire a vibrant systems biology community in San Diego. These goals will be accomplished through three specific aims. First, the Core seeks to build and enrich a strong, active and diverse systems biology faculty in San Diego. To expand the active systems biology community in San Diego, the SDCSB will play a major role in recruiting new faculty in quantitative biology and `omics sciences. To promote the engagement of investigators already in San Diego in new systems biology research, we will continue our successful seed grant program, which allows new labs to compete annually for funding for systems biology pilot projects. Seed grants have led to many fruitful collaborations in the past and have significantly enriched the systems biology community in San Diego. Second, the Core will provide a broad portfolio of educational opportunities in systems biology. The SDCSB will continue to provide educational opportunities to scientists at all career stages. A new Systems Biology Postdoctoral Fellows Program will prepare the next generation of leaders in the field through a unified effort to recruit junior scientists who engage in co-mentored SDCSB research projects. Graduate education has been and will continue to be supported by two major PhD programs: Quantitative Biology (qBio) and Bioinformatics and Systems Biology (BISB). Students will benefit from the new Hacker Lab, which provides facilities for hands-on collaborative experimentation in quantitative biology. To disseminate research and education opportunities widely, the Center will continue to run a successful program of meetings, workshops and seminars. Finally, the Core will impact the general public understanding of systems biology and its importance to society. The Core supports a wide array of outreach activities in recognition of the vital role the scientific community plays in educating lay people and influencing public opinion. Our public outreach program is coordinated with the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center in downtown San Diego and caters to a wide social demographic. SDCSB graduate students have developed a number of hand-on bioinformatics teaching activities that support several major science festivals. We will also continue to organize a team for the annual iGEM synthetic biology competition, recruiting from a local low-income high school.