RaMP: Training towards an Inclusive and Diverse Workforce in Microbiome Sciences

All plants and animals on Earth continually interact with microbial organisms (fungi, bacteria, and viruses). Although a small proportion of these microbes are pathogens that cause disease, the vast majority are either harmless to their hosts or are beneficial. The benefits that both plants and animals receive from the diverse microbial communities living in and on them (their so-called microbiomes) are broad – ranging from aiding in digestion and nutrition to providing critical defenses against pests and disease.

As such, the study of microbiomes is a particularly exciting research avenue because it is relevant to both basic science and understanding of biodiversity and to the development of new applications in human health, conservation, and agricultural practice. Now, to move from knowledge gained in research within the field, it is critical to focus on building a diverse and broadly trained workforce in the Microbiome Sciences.

The overarching goal of this RaMP network is to offer meaningful and leading-edge research experience in Microbiome Sciences to post-baccalaureate participants across research labs in the San Francisco Bay Area, including University of California, Berkeley, University of California, San Francisco, San Francisco State University, and California State University, East Bay, often in collaboration with local industry partners. The program is targeted at recently graduated Community College transfer students, including mentees from historically marginalized backgrounds and/or who have come into science from less traditional paths.

The training and mentoring provided will empower a new generation of microbiome researchers who can continue on to graduate school, enter the workforce as future industry leaders, or follow myriad other meaningful career paths that have opened up because of the increasingly recognized importance of microbiomes in shaping human health and agriculture.

The complexity of microbial communities living in and on plants and animals makes multidisciplinary approaches essential to unlocking their functions and utility. Advancement in Microbiome Sciences requires integration of efforts among researchers in four major areas: theory/modeling, data sciences, technology development, and experimental/model system development.

Moreover, given how closely the Microbiome Sciences interface with other sectors and with grand societal challenges, it is critical that the workforce of researchers in this field moving forward represent the diversity of the communities that the research impacts. The post-baccalaureate participant will be trained in different areas of Microbiome Sciences, providing skills to seek ample job opportunities using rich theoretical frameworks and exciting model systems.

This program will provide broad training opportunities across academic, national lab, museum, and industry settings in the Bay Area. This RaMP network also seeks to build a strong community of mentors to train the next generation of diverse and ethical researchers who will be ideally placed to make fundamental discovery and to translate such discovery into solutions.

The collective strengths and diverse approaches and systems within this growing RaMP network holds the potential to open new avenues for comparative microbiome research, to allow for meaningful cross-talk between theoreticians, empiricists, and data scientists, and to generate new solutions through basic research. Post-baccalaureate participants will spend their year undertaking novel and independent research while fully supported by a network that is unified by its focus on the continual pursuit of knowledge and training in mentoring best practices.

The overarching goal is to create a future scientific community in which diversity, equity, and inclusion is inbuilt and, as a direct result, is pushing the boundaries of our understanding of microbiome composition, function, stability, and engineering to solve grand societal challenges.

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.