NRT-URoL: Chemically-mediated biotic interactions in the age of metabolomics, genomics and enhanced macroecological data

In order to meet the immense challenges of our times, there is a need for scientific leaders who can navigate complex and changing biological, technological, and human-social systems. This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to the University of Nevada, Reno establishes a first-of-its-kind interdisciplinary graduate training program at the interface between chemistry and biology, utilizing recent advances in chemistry, genomics, and mathematical modeling to train students to answer fundamental questions concerning the generation and maintenance of biodiversity.

The project will train sixty-eight (68) masters and doctoral students, including twenty-three (23) NRT-funded trainees, working across the disciplines of organic chemistry, molecular biology, bioinformatics, genomics, metabolomics, ecology, and evolution. The program’s goal is to create both technically and culturally skilled graduates that will become the next science and culture-change leaders in natural resource management agencies, the pharmaceutical and agricultural industries, and academia.

This training program is built around a cohesive research theme: understanding the causes and consequences of phenotypic variation in plants and animals with respect to chemically mediated interactions in biotic communities using novel methods to link genome-to-phenome. The program will provide cutting-edge training in the Chemistry of Biological Interactions (CBI) and the ethical and inclusive conduct of research, leveraging faculty-trainee teams, research focus teams, newly developed courses, reciprocal graduate mentoring, undergraduate mentoring, a whole-program learning community, and various applied partnerships for the practice of ecological theory, synthetic chemistry, drug discovery, and/or public lands management.

Trainees will demonstrate both the depth of technical expertise and breadth of interdisciplinary knowledge required to address previously unattainable research questions related to: 1) the synergistic biological activity of natural products; 2) the effects of natural products or environmental contaminants on trophic interactions; 3) diffuse coevolution across multiple trophic levels; 4) the role of chemical and species interactions in shaping genomic variation; and 5) the generation and maintenance of biological diversity. CBI Fellows will learn how to build and sustain diverse, interdisciplinary research teams whose members are prepared to enter the workforce with the communication, teamwork, and ethics skills that make their science accessible and pertinent to global, resource management, and industry partners and the people these institutions serve.

Fellows will be well-equipped to mentor future generations of scientists through their accumulated outreach and education experience. Finally, trainees will understand and appreciate the global nature of modern science through international exchange opportunities. Importantly, this training program will create a model interdisciplinary chemical ecology program that can be adapted by other institutions and a set of communication, teamwork, and ethics training resources that can be integrated into other graduate programs.

The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The program is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary or convergent research areas through comprehensive traineeship models that are innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.  

This project is jointly funded by the NSF Research Traineeship program and the Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).

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.