The University of Texas at Austin has received National Science Foundation funding for an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Computational Phylogenetics and Applications to Biology. As part of this program, a total of 60 graduate traineeships will be available from fall 2001 through spring 2007. Up to twelve trainees are funded each year. Trainees for the 2003-2004 academic year are to be awarded a stipend of $27,500 per year and a cost-of-education allowance of $10,500 per year, and they may apply for a second year of funding.

This comprehensive, interdisciplinary graduate training program involves approximately 30 faculty participants from the computational and biological sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Two major research areas are being emphasized: computational phylogenetics, which is concerned with the computational aspects of phylogenetic inference, and applied phylogenetics, which uses estimated phylogenies to address a wide diversity of biological questions.

 

Areas of major research effort within the IGERT group are show above.  All projects involve the interaction of the central area (computational phylogenetics) with one of the application areas (shown around the outside).