The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded 19 Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grants totaling $49 million over five years. The IGERT program is designed to meet the challenges of educating 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 good investigator of any era is equipped with intelligence, curiosity, discipline and the urgent desire to find the answers to difficult questions-- traditional qualities with timeless value," says NSF director Rita Colwell. "In addition, to make certain our young researchers are highly competitive today, we need to embrace new kinds of training, new habits of mind, more global ways of looking at the questions before us. We have to give our graduates the best experiences with the best equipment and resources we can provide. That's what these IGERT programs are all about."
This is the third year for these traineeship grants. In all, NSF has made 57 awards to universities across the country. The current awards involve researchers and educators from 28 universities as well as from government and industrial laboratories, non-profit institutions, and an overseas university. Projects supported from this year's competition cover a broad range of topics, including urban ecology, human evolutionary biology, computational problems in atomic and molecular systems, advanced networking, and nanotechnology, among others.
IGERT projects afford graduate students an in-depth education through coursework and research experience in emerging areas of science and engineering, areas that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries and involve a diverse group of faculty members. The awards place a high priority on students' communication and teamwork skills, international awareness, experience with modern instrumentation, and responsible conduct of research. The IGERT projects also link graduate research with internships in industry, national laboratories and other non academic settings in an effort to offer experiences relevant to both academic and nonacademic careers.
All NSF Directorates and the Office of Polar Programs participate in the IGERT program.
For more information see: http://www.nsf.gov/igert
Attachment: List of Year 2000 IGERT awards
Media contact: Charles Drum
703-292-7733/cdrum@nsf.gov
Program contacts: Lawrence Goldberg
703-292-8339/lgoldber@nsf.gov
Wyn Jennings
703-292-8696/pjenning@nsf.gov