REU SITE: Systematics, Evolution and Conservation for the 21st Century

American Museum Natural History, New York NY

Investigators

Abstract

This REU Site award to the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), located in New York, NY, will support the training of 12 undergraduate students for 10 weeks during the summers of 2020-2022. It is anticipated that a total of 36 students, primarily from schools with limited research opportunities or from under-represented groups, will be trained in the program. Students will write a report and give a public presentation on their research accomplishments and many will present the results of their work at scientific conferences. Assessment of the program will be done thru the online SALG URSSA tool. Students will be tracked after the program in order to determine their career paths. The theme of the REU program is systematics and evolution and how those inform conservation priorities. Students will be mentored by the museum curators and scientists conducting research on specific groups of organisms. In selecting participants, emphasis is placed on effective student-project and student-mentor matching; transcripts and test scores are not accepted in the application. Projects will explore biodiversity disciplines from paleontology to conservation genetics that comprise the full research scope of the museum. Students will engage in data gathering methodologies, including morphology, advanced DNA sequencing, computed tomography, and massively parallel next-generation genomics. Participants will be trained in computational analytics including morphometrics, ecological modelling and phylogenetics. Students’ knowledge of the role and responsibility of museums as stewards of diversity through time and space will be enhanced through on-boarding in-depth familiarity with the over 34 million specimens collected over 150 years, weekly lectures and training sessions as well as workshops on ethics and responsible scientific conduct. Students will engage in near-peer mentoring of high-school students who are participants in the museum’s other summer programs. More information about the program can be found by visiting www.amnh.org/REU/, or by contacting the PI (Dr. Mark Siddall at siddall@amnh.org). 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.