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Bi-Monthly News from NIMBioS
May-June 2017
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NIMBioS recently submitted its 9th annual report to the National Science Foundation. Here are some highlights:
- Year 9: 18 meetings of 16 different Working Groups, 3 Investigative Workshops, 3 Tutorials, 5 additional workshops
- More than 800 participants in NIMBioS-hosted activities during this period including 8 postdocs and 26 short-term visitors
- Participants came from 19 countries and 42 U.S. states as well as the District of Columbia representing 187 different institutions.
- Most participants were college or university faculty (50%), but undergraduates (10%), post-doctoral researchers (6%), and graduate students (5%) accounted for a significant fraction of participants.
- Across all events female representation was 44%, and minority representation was near 18%.
- While the majority of participants identify themselves as being in fields of biological/biomedical sciences and mathematical sciences, a number of participants were from the social sciences, marine sciences, health sciences, education, engineering, and others.
- A total of 446 NIMBioS-related products were reported for the period (includes journal articles, book chapters, books, conference papers and presentations, software or data products, grant requests, educational aids or curricula, meetings, workshops or symposiums, and other miscellaneous products/publications).
- Affiliation with a NIMBioS Working Group was found to have a significant positive effect on participant collaboration activities (i.e. number of co-authors, number of international co-authors, number of cross institutional co-authors) and a moderate effect on publication activities (i.e. publishing in new fields).
There's much more besides. Dig into the data and find out specific questions related to accomplishments and impacts that NSF requires in our reporting. Read more.
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New Ways to Collaborate Across Disciplines at NIMBioS
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Two new offerings at NIMBioS begin this summer. Innovator Workshops have a more streamlined review process than our regular Investigative Workshops. They aim to enhance understanding of important questions at the intersection of biology and mathematics. Accelerator Tutorials provide both students and professionals in-depth, cross-disciplinary instruction in quantitative topics. Both offer unique ways to meet the "broader impact" requirements of proposed research.
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Featured Science
Origins of Cooperation
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How you dress, talk, eat and even what you allow yourself to feel—these often unspoken group rules are social norms, and many are internalized to such a degree that you probably don't even notice them. Following norms, however, can sometimes be costly for individuals if norms require sacrifice for the good of the group. How and why did humans evolve to follow such norms in the first place? A new study explores this question, shedding light on the origins of cooperation. Read more.
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Postdoctoral Spotlight
Anatomic Evolution
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NIMBioS Postdoctoral Fellow Sergei Tarasov uses focal lineages of dung beetles and wasps to explore new ontology-based models for phenotypic evolution. In his research, he is using the statistical framework of Bayesian networks to develop more realistic models to accommodate both hidden and hierarchical components. In this video, he explains how new models can help researchers reconstruct more accurately the evolution of anatomies.
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New Faces
Wiggins Joins NIMBioS
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NIMBioS welcomes Greg Wiggins as Education & Outreach Coordinator. Greg has a Ph.D. in Plants, Soils, and Insects from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, an M.S. in Entomology and Plant Pathology from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a B.A. in Biology from Southern Adventist University, Collegedale, Tennessee. Prior to joining NIMBioS, he was a research assistant professor in entomology and plant pathology with UT's Institute of Agriculture.
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A Few Spots Left!
NIMBioS Tutorial 'RevBayes': Bayesian Inference of Phylogeny
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This tutorial features RevBayes, an exciting new program for Bayesian inference of phylogeny that succeeds the popular program MrBayes. Instruction is based on a combination of carefully tailored lectures introducing the theoretical and conceptual basis of each inference problem and hands-on computer tutorials demonstrating how to explore these questions using RevBayes. Details & online application
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- Live Streaming! Can't make it to the NIMBioS Investigative Workshop on Pan-microbial Trait Ecology? We've got you covered. Sessions will be live streamed. Meeting dates: June 14-16 (link)
- More Live Streaming! Can't make it to the NIMBioS Tutorial on Uncertainty Quantification for Biological Models? We've got you covered. Sessions will be live streamed. Meeting dates: June 26-28 (link)
- Gavrilets Elected Member of American Academy of Arts & Sciences (link)
- NIMBioS-UT Partner to Help Students with Disabilities (link)
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Recent NIMBioS Publications
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Results produced from NIMBioS research activities are important in measuring our success.
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NIMBioS is sponsored by the National Science Foundation through NSF Award #DBI-1300426, with additional support from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
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