NRT-DESE: Interdisciplinary Graduate Training to Understand and Inform Decision Processes Using Advanced Spatial Data Analysis and Visualization

This National Science Foundation Research Traineeship (NRT) award to SUNY at Stony Brook will provide science and engineering graduate students with unique interdisciplinary skills to assist and eventually lead in the translation of complex data-enabled research into informed decisions and sound policies. Within all sectors of industry and government, effective decision making depends on the ability of scientists to interpret data and communicate results in a way that supports the decision-making process. This new training program responds to this challenge with an interdisciplinary set of new courses and a suite of activities united by the theme of "Scientific Training and Research to Inform DEcisions" (STRIDE). It specifically will include the rarely explicitly taught skills of decision support, such as understanding the perspectives of stakeholders, science communication, and translating scientific uncertainty. The project anticipates training 90 PhD students, including at least 20 funded doctoral trainees, and a similar number of non-trainee MS and PhD students that will participate in program components from the departments of atmospheric and marine sciences, ecology and evolution, computer science, biomedical informatics, applied mathematics and statistics, journalism, and advanced computational science. STRIDE will initially target environmental sustainability (including climate change, marine ecology and natural resource management, and illegal deforestation) and energy sustainability, and will add population health in the third year. Research in advanced visual data analytics to support decisions will be pervasive in all areas. The cross fertilization between disciplines focused on decision making will prepare students to make discoveries in the domain sciences and will lead to innovations in visual data analytics. To develop research skills in new contexts and to diversify career perspectives, trainees will have summer externships at non-academic partners such as IBM Research, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, with new partners being added each year. The program comprises three major components: 1) a set of specially designed courses on decision support, spatial data analysis, visualization, and communication required for all students; 2) training in a STEM domain discipline; and 3) a set of non-course-based program elements in which all students will participate, including recruitment, skill development, professional development, and personal development. In addition to degrees in their domain-science disciplines, students will receive a graduate certificate from STRIDE after completing the three proposed courses and program activities. Specific innovations to be tested by rigorous evaluation include the seminar course in scientific decision support that will feature many government/industry scientists, decision makers, and journalists remotely leading discussions on the science, societal, and other challenges associated with decision support in their respective fields. Another new course focusing on science communication for decision makers will be provided by the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science in the School of Journalism. The NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program is designed to encourage the development and implementation of bold, new potentially transformative models for STEM graduate education training. The Traineeship Track is dedicated to effective training of STEM graduate students in high priority interdisciplinary research areas, through the comprehensive traineeship model that is innovative, evidence-based, and aligned with changing workforce and research needs.