Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Informatics for FY 2003

Lawler, Richard R, Woods Hole MA

Investigators

Abstract

Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Interdisciplinary Informatics are sponsored jointly by the Directorates for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) and Biological Sciences (BIO) to encourage research and training that cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries between them. These fellowships provide opportunities for interdisciplinary research and educational activities in biology and informatics to a wide range of recent doctoral recipients (biologists, chemists, physicists, mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists, and others) who seek to conduct research on biological questions using informatics tools and methods. It is expected that the Fellows trained through these fellowships will play an important role in training the future workforce. Postdoctoral training in informatics will permit junior scientists trained in biology, mathematical, chemical, and physical sciences to play key roles in developing new quantitative tools and methods that will advance informatics in biology and other fields. The research and training plan is entitled "Linking variation in behavior to long-term population dynamics in a wild lemur population." This research is developing modeling techniques linking short-term fitness consequences of individual behaviors (using dynamic programming) with long-term population dynamics (using matrix modeling). It uses data collected on a wild population of lemur, the white sifaka, and neural networks to merge behavioral sequences with population dynamics, with a view toward conservation problems.