User:Nimbios/National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis

The National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis is a research institute focused on the science of mathematics and biology. Known by its acronym NIMBioS (pronounced NIM-bus), the Institute opened in September 2008, arising from a collaborative agreement between the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with additional support from The University of Tennessee (UT), Knoxville. NIMBioS will host more than 600 scientists each year at its facility located on the UT campus.

Primary goals of NIMBios are: •	to address key biological questions using cross-disciplinary approaches in mathematical biology •	and to foster the development of a cadre of researchers who are capable of conceiving and engaging in creative and collaborative connections across disciplines.

To achieve its goals, NIMBioS advances a wide variety of research and outreach/education activities designed to facilitate interaction between mathematicians and biologists to arrive at innovative solutions to environmental problems. Two primary mechanisms for research are Working Groups and Investigative Workshops. Working Groups are comprised of 10-15 invited participants focusing on specific questions related to mathematical biology. Each group typically meets at the Institute two to three times over the course of two years. Investigative workshops may include 30-40 participants with some invited by organizers and others accepted through an open application process. Workshops are more general in focus and may lead to working group formation. NIMBioS also provides support for post-doctoral and sabbatical fellows, short-term visitors, graduate research assistants, and faculty collaborators at UT.

Research activities have investigated intragenomic conflict, multi-scale simulation of cellular processes, human origins, natural system dynamics, and infectious diseases in systems with wildlife hosts.

NIMBioS encourages multidisciplinary participation in all its activities. Participants at NIMBioS have included behavioral biologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, computational scientists, anthropologists, geneticists, psychologists, bioinformaticians, mathematicians, statisticians, veterinarians, epidemiologists, and wildlife biologists.

NIMBioS has an active Education and Outreach program with events and activities for everyone from elementary school students through college professors and the general public. At the college level, NIMBioS organizes a Research Experience for Undergraduates and a Research Experience for Veterinary Students program for seven weeks each summer. Veterinary students and undergraduates majoring in math, biology, and related fields live on campus and work in teams with UT professors on innovative research projects. High school teachers can also participate in the program.

For teachers, NIMBioS offers the Teacher Collaboration Program in which teachers with interest in mathematics and biology are paired with active researchers in the math biology community. Collaboration activities range from teaching projects and classroom visits to curriculum design and after school activities.

NIMBioS provides varying levels of tutorial workshops designed to enlighten biologists about key quantitative methods, such as optimal control and optimization or high performance computing methods for analyzing biological problems involving large data sets, spatial information, and dynamics.

NIMBioS’ director is Louis Gross, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. NIMBioS leadership team also includes four associate directors and a deputy director. NIMBioS has an external Board of Advisors consisting of 23 members from academic institutions from around the world. In addition, NIMBioS has a group of seven senior personnel consisting of UT faculty and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) scientists, and a group of 39 additional associated faculty and staff collaborators from UT and ORNL.

NIMBioS collaborates with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to develop methods of particular interest for natural area management that are transferable to numerous U.S. locations. Other partners in NIMBioS include IBM and ESRI.

The need for the Institute arose out of the significant growth of the field of mathematical biology over the last decade with research becoming more closely linked to observation and experiment. Rather than starting from mathematical abstractions, it is now common for researchers to 1) begin with observations; 2) use those to suggest promising methods, tools and models; and 3) proceed to analysis, simulation, evaluation and application. Across the spectrum of the life sciences in which mathematics has been contributing new insights, data are increasingly used to focus conceptual models as the first step in problem formulation.

The NIMBioS web site [(http://www.nimbios.org)] includes descriptions of working groups, investigative workshops, post-doctoral fellowships, sabbaticals, short-term visits, graduate assistantships, and faculty positions and information on how to submit requests for support. The web site also describes education and outreach opportunities for undergraduates, teachers, and K-12 students.