RaMP - Understanding and Preserving Tropical BioDiversity on a Changing Planet

RaMP-UP Tropical BioDiversity is an ambitious, multi-level mentoring and training program formed through a partnership between the Global Sustainability Scholars Program (GSS) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panamá. The program identifies and supports young scholars with a passion for sustaining a biodiverse planet and connects them to cutting-edge, integrative research opportunities focused on the response of tropical biodiversity to global change.

RaMP-UP Tropical BioDiversity is built upon the need to build a more diverse community of scholars with varying perspectives to help solve challenges such as land use change, biodiversity loss, and climate change. The program focuses on the need to be proactive in identifying and supporting talented individuals from traditionally underrepresented groups, the opportunity for broadening participation through training in global change research and improving mentoring practices across research communities, and the benefits of continued professional development in our scientific workforce.

The earth’s landscapes and seascapes are undergoing a transformation at an unprecedented rate, threatening biodiversity and the maintenance of ecosystem services. These concerns are especially pressing in the tropics, where 80% of the world's biodiversity is found, where most humans live, and where current models predict the greatest climate induced environmental change.

Our ability to understand, predict, and manage how organisms, communities, and ecosystems respond to environmental changes will determine the sustainability of diversity on our planet. RaMP-UP Tropical BioDiversity seeks to build a transformative training program for rising biologists interested in research focused on how tropical organisms, communities, and ecosystems respond to environmental change.

This program recruits and supports a diverse national network of postbaccalaureate that reflect perspectives and experiences of the communities disproportionately affected by global change impacts and under-represented in science and policy making. The program connects three, year-long, cohort-based research experiences. Each year, the RaMP-UP program will matriculate 12 Fellows to join tropical biodiversity research programs at STRI.

Trainings and research projects will be conducted within state-of-the-art field and lab facilities embedded throughout Panama’s diverse tropical landscapes and seascapes. RaMP-UP Tropical BioDiversity will connect STRI senior scientists, postdocs and graduate students with Fellows. Fellows will engage with the GSS network of mentors, alumni and supportive programming.

STRI mentors will form a community of practice around mentoring, and document how their mentoring changed as a function of the program.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.