Overview

The University of Hawaii’s (UH) NSF IGERT: Integrative Training in Ecology, Conservation & Pathogen Biology (ECPB) program provides a unique interdisciplinary graduate training opportunity to students with research career goals in ecology and evolutionary biology, conservation science, pathogen biology and infectious diseases. The experience and skills gained provides students with a broadened worldview; exposure to a wide diversity of research approaches, models, and methods; and equips students with the necessary skills to conduct innovative, cross-cutting research. IGERT Fellows, along with other ECPB participants, will be prepared for a variety of highly productive research careers.

ECPB will simultaneously benefit the broader UH research community of students and faculty. Over 30 faculty members across academic departments and three research institutions and campuses are working to expand their collaborative research activity by participating in ECPB Integrative Research Clusters. Working within one or more clusters and an intensive Training Program, IGERT Fellows and Associates are exposed to a wide variety of important research problems and cutting edge laboratory and field techniques at the intersection of ecology, conservation, and pathogen research.

Examples include:

  • Detecting pathogens in natural populations and the environment and assessment of their disease and epidemic potential,
  • Developing methods for isolating and characterizing novel viruses capable of jumping between different host species,
  • Modeling the interaction of environmental change, pathogen evolution, and disease emergence in natural populations on different time and space scales, and
  • Investigating the role of pathogens and disease in the decline of species, ecological communities, and ecosystems of special conservation concern.

ECPB is centered on understanding infectious disease emergence and the underlying causes and consequences from the molecular to ecosystem level. Understanding disease and health across these scales, the role of biodiversity, environmental stress and resilience in ecosystems is part of this scientific problem. Moreover, nearly all infectious diseases are an extension of host-parasite relationships, the ecological and evolutionary dynamics of which have an analog in the biology of invasion. For this reason, ECPB supports Fellows and the participation of graduate faculty conducting such research. All ECPB supported Fellows and Associates’ research will have an ecological evolutionary component, makes this cross-scale linkage and is demonstrably relevant to biodiversity conservation in its social and policy contexts.

ECPB brings together educators and researchers to jointly craft a training experience. Fellows benefit from both 1) direct interaction with researchers from different disciplines, and 2) participation in a specially designed program integrating core course work, field experiences, colloquia, laboratory rotations, workshops, and mentoring. Unifying these various elements is a problem-based approach focused on adaptability and innovation rather than accumulating a canon of specific facts.

ECPB includes a suite of new courses, colloquia, an international symposium, and an international exchange program. A transdisciplinary theme is designed into the curriculum and will be interwoven throughout all ECPB activities. IGERT Fellows will receive specific training in important skills needed for successful careers as scientists through a series of professional and career development workshops.

Venue

Hawaii provides the ideal “natural laboratory” to conduct such an integrated education and research project. Hawaii’s “mountain-to-sea” ecosystems represent natural catchments that span upland tropical forest to barrier reefs and natural to urban environments often within less than a kilometer. People of different racial, ethnic and national origins typically work, live and raise their families together in Hawaii. Collaboration among people of different cultures and nationalities is the rule rather than the exception. It extends to graduate education and research at the University of Hawaii where diversity is fostered and thrives.

The University of Hawaii campuses are uniquely situated as a U.S. gateway to Asia and the Pacific basin. The region provides a remarkable diversity of environments as well as disease and conservation challenges, which extend across many international boundaries. Many of these can be studied and experience can be gained working collaboratively with researchers from many different Asian and Pacific countries without leaving the Hawaiian Islands. However, ECPB’s training and graduate research activities include field components with cooperating institutions throughout the Asia-Pacific region.