Louis J. Gross

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics

University of Tennessee - Knoxville

NIMBioS Director

NIMBioS: A National Institute to Foster Mathematical and Biological Linkages

NIMBioS.org

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

• Foster new collaborative efforts to investigate fundamental and applied questions arising in biology using appropriate mathematical and computational methods

• Enhance the essential human capacity to analyze complex biological questions and develop necessary new mathematics

• Encourage broader public appreciation of the unity of science and mathematics

U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Methods include: Working Groups, Investigative Workshops, Tutorials and education-linked-to-research endeavors.

General Methods

Choosing fundamental problems that will benefit from cross-disciplinary collaborations.

Choosing applied problems of sufficient general interest to be readily extended beyond an initial region/ organism/ system.

Building appropriate collaborations to address these fundamental and applied problems.

Developing education and outreach opportunities to diversify participation in these collaborations at all levels.

Specific MethodsFocused research projects (Working Groups) to build

collaboration among diverse communities.

Building collaborations through more open-ended general problems, addressed through multiple approaches (Investigative Workshops).

Skill and methods-based programs (Tutorials) that foster a broader understanding of potential applications of modern math and computational science in biology.

An expansive set of education-linked-to-research endeavors from elementary through post-doctoral level that provide diverse opportunities at the math/biology interface.

Why this approach?The life sciences have become increasingly

quantitative, driven in part by questions linking multiple organismal levels, requiring enhanced collaboration between empirical and quantitative researchers

Although there are several quantitative centers which include biological efforts, these are driven by inherent focus in Math/Stat/CS, not fundamental or applied biology.

Numerous reports emphasize the need for better quantitative education for life scientists, thus we have an expansive set of education-linked-to-research endeavors at multiple levels.

General Questions for a Working Group

What data are available?

What math and modeling techniques are available?

What are the empirical patterns that cannot be explained by existing theories?

How can we adapt existing models to fully use available data?

What kinds of data are needed to better inform the models?

What new math or modeling techniques and methods need to be developed?

Metrics of success (Working Groups) :The major metric is whether the Working Group produces papers and

tools that are transformative and lead to new interdisciplinary collaborations that result in ongoing research beyond the specific activities in the original WG request. Assessment of this includes products of the full WG, of subsets of the WG and through your collaboration with those outside the WG (such as students) that arise due to issues discussed by the WG. The impact of these collaborations may be assessed from papers published, research proposals submitted for support, new courses developed, new student projects designed, symposia at scientific meetings, etc.

Another direct metric is whether future activities here and in other venues arise from the WG. This can be new Working Groups, short-term visits, projects for our REU program, etc.

Metrics of success (Investigative Workshops):

The major metric is whether the Workshop leads to new collaborations that result in transformative science and education. Assessment of this includes whether you established a new collaboration here that leads to science/mathematics/educational initiatives beyond what was discussed here. The impact of these collaborations may be assessed from papers published, research proposals submitted for support, new courses developed, new student projects designed, symposia organized at professional society meetings, etc.

Another direct metric is whether future activities here arise from the Workshop. This can be Working Groups, short-term visits, projects for our REU program, etc. We encourage you to consider these as potential follow-up activities.

Post-doctoral FellowsPost-docs are independent researchers chosen based upon

a proposal that fits NIMBioS opportunities

Each post-doc is assigned two mentors, one from mathematical/ computational sciences and one from biology.

Post-docs are given the opportunity to teach regular UT classes and to make short term visits to our partner Minority Serving Institutions.

Sabbatical Fellows - we offer a limited number of these for visits longer than a month

Short-term Visitors - for periods of a few days to less than a month to use our facilities or collaborate

NIMBioS Advisory Board NIMBioS activities are community-driven. We request suggestions from

a broad array of constituents.

Given the enormous potential breadth of scientific areas across life sciences and mathematics in which NIMBioS could be involved, prioritization of effort needs to be made.

NIMBioS relies on requests from the community to prioritize support, as evaluated through a formal process utilizing the broad set of expertise of the external Board of Advisors.

The Board meets physically once a year and twice virtually to make recommendations to the Leadership Team on requests for support of Working Groups, Investigative Workshops, Postdocs and Sabbatical Fellows. The Board also provides guidance on policies, suggests methods to advance NIMBioS objectives, evaluates the Institute leadership, and assists through its Committee to Promote Diversity to enhance participation by under-represented groups.

NIMBioS Leadership decides which Tutorials, short-term visitors & REU students to support.

Innovation: Development of procedures for community-driven suggestions for science activitiesthat are vetted by an external advisory board. This had been the mode of operations at NCEAS and NESCent, but was novel for the broader biology and mathematics communities. The breadth of potential areas of requested support required developing a highly diverse external Advisory Board to effectively evaluate requests and provide recommendations to theLeadership Team.

Education and Outreach Innovations

• High impact K-12 education/outreach program

• Unique Undergraduate Research Conference at the Interface of Mathematics and Biology

• Interdisciplinary, team-oriented REU program

• Unique Research Experience for Veterinary Students program

• Tutorials developing appreciation for new mathematical and computational approaches for biology

• Establishment of education & outreach collaborations with other NSF Centers and institutes

• Partnerships with Minority Serving Institutions

K-12 Outreach

Biology in a Box

USA Science & Engineering Festival

Junior Science Symposium

Gadget Girls

Adventures in STEM Camp

Undergraduate EducationAnnual Undergraduate Research Conference at the Interface

of Biology and Mathematics (2009-present)

In 2011: A total of 110 participants (83 undergraduates)

From 42 institutions in 20 states, Puerto Rico & Canada represented

50 oral and poster presentations by students

REU/REV Summer ProgramResearch Experiences for Undergraduates and Veterinary Students

•2009-2013•8 week program•6 NIMBioS postdocs as mentors•4-6 group projects/year•91 participants to date:

• 11 veterinary students• 5 high school teachers

Diversity• 70% female• 1 motility-impaired• 12 from underrepresented groups• 8 students from MSI partners

•NSF Centers Education and Outreach Coordinator (EOC) Meetings (hosted in Feb 2012)

•Coordinate sessions at SACNAS meeting, lead organizers of Modern Math Workshop in October 2012, part of Diversity Initiative of NSF Math Institutes

•Joint MBI-NIMBioS-CAMBAM Summer Graduate Program, 2011 and 2012 at MBI

Collaborations with Other NSF Biology Centers and Math Institutes

EOC Meeting 2012

Joint MBI-NIMBioS-CAMBAM Summer Graduate Workshop

2011: Workshop on Mathematical Ecology & Evolution2012: Workshop on Stochastics Applied to Biological Systems

• 2 weeks• 40 participants• Instructors from across North America• NIMBioS leadership team contributes to:

• Organizing• Selecting students• Giving lectures• Directing team research projects

Tutorials on Mathematical/Computational

Applications to BiologyHigh Performance Computing (Training-the-Trainer for IT staff working with biologists) – with NICS (2009)

Optimal Control and Optimization for Biologists (2009)

Graph Theory and Biological Networks (2010)

Fast, Free Phylogenies: HPC for Phylogenetics – with IPLANT (2010)

Multi-cell, Multi-scale Modelling (2011)

Migration from the Desktop: HPC application of R and other codes for Biological Applications – with RDAV (2011)

Stochastic Modelling in Biology (2011)

Mathematical Modeling Cell Biology – Virtual Cell (2013)

DiversityNIMBioS is committed to promoting diversity in all

aspects of activities including gender, ethnicity, scientific field, career stage, geography and type of

home institution

-The diversity goals are to be clearly stated in the applicationguidelines for organizers of potential activities, and diversity statements in activity applications are an essential part of the selection criterion.

-The Board, the Committee to Promote Diversity, and Leadership Team work with organizers to help increase the diversity of invited participants

-Each participant is contacted up to 3 times about the demographic surveyand is also contacted up to 3 times about the evaluation survey of his/her activity

Minority Serving Institution Partnerships

Univ. of Texas, El Paso (UTEP)Cal State, San Marcos

Fisk UniversityHoward University

------------Tennessee State University

North Carolina A&T University

•Priority consideration for participation in NIMBioS activities

•Visits by NIMBioS post-docs

•Collaboration for curriculum program development

•Some institutions chosen for demonstrated interest in math and biology

UTEP

Fisk

Howard

Evaluation Program

Innovation: We developed a program that provides evaluations of all activities, centered around the diverse objectives of these programs. This provides quick feed-back to activity organizers as well as the Leadership Team on participants’ perceptions of our activities. This focus continues but has been expanded to a systems-based approach to evaluation of center-scale effectiveness, with particular emphasis on how to assess the impacts of NIMBioS in developing cross-disciplinary collaborations and research.

Communication Efforts• We have a bi-monthly on-line newsletter and have established

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and LinkedIn sites

• NIMBioS website has 900+ html pages, 600+ pdf docs,345,000+ visits from 187,000+ unique visitors, average of 2:41 min on site, average 2.86 pages per visit

• We have relied almost exclusively on electronic connections –4,300+ subscribers to bi-monthly newsletter, 28% click-through rate

• We have issued 66 press releases

Communication Efforts• NIMBioS Multimedia Content

95 videos including interviews with visiting researchers, 188 blog posts since start in Sept 2011

• NIMBioS Social Media Program 1450+ followers on Twitter

+ 500+ Facebook fans

Established cloud collaborative document sharing through NIMBioS.wiggio.com for all activities

NIMBioS projects have received recognition in many media:

Science, Nature, the New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, among others

Biology by Numbers blog affiliated with the National Public Radio Science Friday program.

Innovation: A Songwriter-in-Residence program to encourage outreach to communities that have little exposure to the interconnections between math and biology. With artists stipends provided by UT, this has encouraged NIMBioS researchers to expand their range of public interactions and has led to exposure for NIMBioS in several national media formats.

Communications

What we’d like from this meeting?

New collaborative efforts across centers on evaluating center-scale and within-center scale impacts.

Suggestions on long-term sustainability particularly as it relates to cross-discipline opportunities.

Suggestions based on success elsewhere in convincing local administrators of the need for long-term institutional commitments.

Suggestions on how to enhance cross-center communications both within the staffs/communities and to the broader community of researchers/educators.

Building towards more shared activities internationally.