NESCent Annual Report, Year 4

YEAR 4 ANNUAL REPORT SUMMARY

During year 4 NESCent continued its maturation as a Center for the promotion of activities leading to a “grand synthesis” in evolutionary biology. The achievements of the Center are detailed in the subsequent sections of this report. Briefly, they include:

• In year 4 the Center functioned with a full complement of postdoctoral fellows. As members of our first cohort reached the end of their terms, they were all successful in finding tenure track faculty positions or high quality postdoctoral positions. We had fewer sabbatical scholars than in the past, but initiated a successful short term visiting scholar program. Our group of in house scientists has continued to be highly interactive, with a large number of activities. One of the most notable was the “synthaton” in which a group of postdocs, and EOG and informatics staff collaborated to produce a review on “what is synthetic evolutionary biology”?

• We have hosted a variety of meetings over the past 10 months (as year 4 is not yet complete) including over 30 meetings of NESCent funded working, catalysis, informatics and education groups. We have also hosted several additional groups, bringing a total of over 650 scientists to the Center over the past 10 months. NESCent sponsored activities have already contributed to significant advances in evolutionary biology.

• We have an outstanding Informatics program, with excellent staff and the full range of infrastructural services to support our scientific programs.

• The Informatics staff has supported in-house and visiting scientists in a variety of ways, and has partnered with external groups to obtain two external awards (NSF INTEROP and DRYAD proposals), with an additional proposal still in review (DataNetOne).

• The Center, in partnership with the Metadata Research Center at UNC Chapel Hill, has completed phase I of the development of DRYAD so that a data repository is now functional. We have worked with societies to come closer to our aim of Society/Journal management of the program.

• Our Education and Outreach group has continued activities in its major areas of focus. An NSF grant to develop innovative curricular materials for evolutionary biology has been awarded (CCLI phase 1 – “Show me the Evolution!”). Our EOG group has partnered with some of the most important individuals in evolutionary education to further the development of teaching material and pedagogical advances.

• The EOG group has completed a number of highly successful outreach activities, including co-sponsoring a symposium on modern evolutionary biology at the National Association of Biology Teachers annual conference and a program at the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science meeting,

• We have offered a variety of training opportunities and courses, ranging from advanced computational techniques, to a postdoctoral fellow professional development series to a workshop in teaching evolutionary biology to elementary school students.

• We have a broad range of activities directed towards the recruitment of underrepresented groups into evolutionary biology. These activities span all branches of the Center.

• The administrative infrastructure of the Center has continued to develop to efficiently and effectively support NESCent sponsored science. Substantial effort has been devoted to review and renewal activities.