IGERT: Integrated Graduate Education and Research in Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity

这个IGERT项目是生物地球化学和环境生物复杂性领域的教育和研究的综合计划。概念、技术和计算的发展正在推动生物、地球和物理科学之间的主要融合。在接下来的几十年里，这种学科的融合将改变对控制自然环境稳定性和可持续性的基本过程的理解。这些见解将对预测和管理现代人类活动对地方、区域和全球范围内生态系统结构和功能的影响的能力产生非凡的影响。这些新知识对于规划一个安全、可持续和繁荣的未来至关重要。IGERT项目的目标是创造一个环境，让来自生态学和进化生物学、生物地球化学、环境工程、水文学、环境微生物学和材料科学的研究人员聚集在一起，为环境科学中的主要问题创造新的跨学科方法，并培养这门新的跨学科科学的下一代领导者。重点将放在智力多样性和非传统教学方法上，以培养跨越学科界限的学生，同时有意加强与国际和非大学合作伙伴的联系。工作坊和研讨会式的学习将被采用，以及学生积极参与项目的管理和实施。智力的焦点将是生物和物理化学控制对金属和营养物质，特别是陆生氮循环的相互作用；微生物过程在生物地球化学循环中的作用以及基因型和表型变异对生态系统功能的影响。最终，该计划将考虑复杂的行为是如何从自然和管理生态系统中单个简单关系的相互作用中产生的。康奈尔大学在各个学科方面都有出色的资源，而IGERT项目提供了一个独特的机会，将这些个人的努力整合成一个整体。IGERT是一项nsf范围内的计划，旨在满足培养具有多学科背景和技术，专业和个人技能的美国博士科学家和工程师的挑战，以满足未来职业需求。该计划旨在通过建立创新的研究生教育和培训模式，在一个超越传统学科界限的合作研究的肥沃环境中，促进研究生教育的文化变革。在该计划的第五年，奖项将颁发给21个机构，这些机构的项目共同跨越了NSF支持的科学和工程领域。

This IGERT project is an integrated program of education and research in the area of Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity. Conceptual, technical, and computational developments are driving a major convergence among the biological, earth, and physical sciences. Over the next several decades, this disciplinary convergence will transform understanding of basic processes that control the stability and sustainability of natural environments. These insights will have extraordinary implications for the ability to predict and manage the effects of modern human activities on the structure and function of ecosystems across local, regional, and global scales. Such new knowledge is critical in planning for a safe, sustainable, and prosperous future. The IGERT project goals are to create an environment where researchers from ecology and evolutionary biology, biogeochemistry, environmental engineering, hydrology, environmental microbiology, and materials science come together to create novel interdisciplinary approaches to major questions in environmental science, and to train the next generation of leaders in this new interdisciplinary science. Emphasis will be on intellectual diversity and non-traditional pedagogies in training students across disciplinary boundaries, while deliberately enhancing connections with international and non-university partners. Workshop and seminar style learning will be employed, as well as active involvement of students in the management and implementation of the program. The intellectual foci will be the interaction of biological and physico-chemical controls on the cycling of metals and nutrients, especially terrestrial nitrogen; the role of microbiological processes in mediating biogeochemical cycling; and the effects of variation in genotype and phenotype on ecosystem functioning. Ultimately, the program will consider how complex behavior arises from the interaction of individually simple relationships in natural and managed ecosystems. Cornell University has outstanding resources in individual disciplines, and the IGERT program offers a unique opportunity to bring together many of these individual efforts into an integrated whole.IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the multidisciplinary backgrounds and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries. In the fifth year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span the areas of science and engineering supported by NSF.