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UCLA is among the nation’s leaders in training
the cadre of young scientists who will make tomorrow’s discoveries
Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship
National Science Foundation: $8M
Twenty years ago there were no such fields as bioinformatics,
neuroengineering or nano-scale materials science. But today
these are among the
most innovative new fields of inquiry, fertile treasure grounds
being mined for scientific riches such as more effective therapies
to fight disease, answers to the mysteries surrounding the circuitry
of the human brain or low-energy sources of light. The hunt for
new discoveries is not an easy one and requires the work of a
wholly new kind of scientist trained to work and communicate
across the
boundaries of divergent disciplines.
At UCLA, these scientists of the future are being supported by
graduate programs in materials creation, bioinformatics and
neuroengineering that broaden their
perspective and give them the necessary tools and training to hunt for discoveries
that happen between very different fields. Without these highly diverse programs, it would be
difficult for graduate students to straddle both worlds. The experience
might be likened to rewiring the brain patterns of scientific minds
that have been trained to think in a particular way, opening them
to learn each other’s vocabulary and envision new solutions
to problems that might, in the past, never have been imagined.
Photos show Los Angeles high school science teachers
learning classroom experiments designed by UCLA's graduate students in
the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship program.
Their challenge was to teach sophisticated concepts using ordinary materials.
 Materials
Creation Training Program web site
Bioinformatics
Program web site
Neuroscience
Program web site
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