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Monday, December 8, 2003 Scripps Biodiversity Center Awarded Grant for New Interdisciplinary Marine Program Award initiates program on understanding ocean threats, providing solutions Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UCSD Scripps Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography's Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation (CMBC) has been awarded a multimillion dollar grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to train a new generation of scholars capable of confronting important societal issues concerning the health of the world's oceans.The five-year, $3.5-million award was granted through the NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program. The centerpiece of CMBC's new program is interdisciplinary, team-based, problem-solving training to foster analytical and communication skills with a global outlook.  The IGERT program was developed in 1997 to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by promoting innovative new models for graduate education and training that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. CMBC's new program, titled "Marine biodiversity: Understanding threats and providing solutions," will involve interdisciplinary research on ecology (present and historical), conservation biology, physical sciences, genetics and genomics, informatics, economics, law, and policy. The program will build links outside academia-nationally and internationally-through internships and provide opportunities for students to apply their training to real-world problems under the mentoring of conservation practitioners whose organizations are partners in the program. "We expect the result of these collaborative efforts will be creative solutions that overcome traditional problems arising from the lack of understanding between interest groups," said CMBC Director Nancy Knowlton, the grant's principal investigator and a professor at Scripps. "This is a truly inter-disciplinary approach, in which Scripps students work alongside social science Ph.D. students to learn how to have an impact on critical issues in a complex world. Our goal is to train professionals who not only can identify the problems, but also who can find practical solutions within ecological, social, and economic constraints." In addition to Knowlton, coprincipal investigators of the grant include Enric Sala and Jeremy Jackson of Scripps; Michael Tillman of the Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC); and Richard Carson of UCSD's Department of Economics. The investigators note that identifying the magnitude and causes of environmental change is a complex task, but this alone is not enough. They say the environmental and socioeconomic consequences of alternative policy responses must be evaluated and information conveyed to policy-makers and the public. The new IGERT award is one example of how CMBC is creating innovation in the study of marine biodiversity and conservation. "One of the greatest scientific challenges facing society today is understanding, protecting, managing, and restoring biodiversity in our oceans," said Knowlton. # # # # # # Note to broadcast and cable producers: University of California, San Diego provides an on-campus satellite uplink facility for live or pre-recorded television interviews. Please phone or e-mail the media contact listed above to arrange an interview. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, at University of California, San Diego, is one of the oldest, largest and most important centers for global science research and education in the world. The National Research Council has ranked Scripps first in faculty quality among oceanography programs nationwide Now in its second century of discovery, the scientific scope of the institution has grown to include biological, physical, chemical, geological, geophysical and atmospheric studies of the earth as a system. Hundreds of research programs covering a wide range of scientific areas are under way today in 65 countries. The institution has a staff of about 1,300, and annual expenditures of approximately $155 million from federal, state and private sources. Scripps operates one of the largest U.S. academic fleets with four oceanographic research ships and one research platform for worldwide exploration. |
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