NSF Student Travel Grant for 2020 Annual International Conference on Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB 2020)

Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports student travel to the Research in Computational Molecular Biology (RECOMB 2020) conference. RECOMB is an international scientific conference bridging the computational, mathematical, and biological sciences, founded in 1997 to provide a scientific forum for theoretical advances in computational biology and their applications in molecular biology and medicine. RECOMB 2019 will be the 24th Annual Meeting, to be held in Padua, Italy. The meeting will feature keynote talks by international scientific leaders, presentations of refereed research papers in computational biology, special sessions and poster sessions. This project will provide support for up to 10 US-based students to attend the meeting. Particular efforts will be made to promote diversity through targeted invitation to applicants from groups underrepresented in the scientific workforce . The project will promote education of US students in the field of computational biology through exposure to state-of-the-art research in their discipline and opportunities to talk with international leaders in the field and receive feedback on their own work. The meeting and proposed travel fellowships will have particular value for educational purposes, creating a unique training opportunity for up to 10 U.S.-based students of computational biology. These students, selected from a competitive application process, will be awarded travel fellowships that will provide partial support for registration, hotel, and travel costs. By attending the RECOMB meeting, students will gain exposure to the latest advances in computational biology, a field that has become central to progress in the life sciences generally and whose practitioners are in high demand at pharmaceutical, agricultural, environmental, consumer products, biotech, software, hardware, and service companies. Students supported by the project will bring back the knowledge they acquire to their labs, advancing scientific development and workforce training of future US scientists. NSF investment in this project will also help provide valuable networking opportunities to supported students, advancing their careers and the nation's competitiveness in an expanding, global industry that has become central to progress in the life sciences. 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.