What is it? A cohort of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and students interested in complex, adaptive, biological systems spanning both SNS and Shaw. This is meant to be low-time-committment interest group with occasional activities that promote interdisciplinarity by way of a common interest in biological complexity.
Why? Providing a means of communication between faculty and students who are generally interested in complex biological systems may allow us to
- Advertise or coteach courses that might be of general interest to students in different schools/programs -- perhaps increasingly important as coconvened graduate courses are discouraged and obtaining the threshold attendance among graduate students may be more of an issue
- Increase awareness and connections between folks with intersecting interests across otherwise separated programs
- Foster collaborations among faculty/postdocs/students
- Possibly provide a future platform for a sanctioned 'Center' or 'Institute' down the road
What would we do?
Shorter-term possibilities
- Group listserve & wiki to inform members of seminars, visiting researches, events, etc that may be of interest
- Once-per-semester working group ‘meeting’ or workshop for people to share their work - be it well-formulated or still in the idea stage.
Longer-term possibilities
- Become a recognized 'institute' within UC Merced, opening funding potential
- Fund a postdoctoral position(s) or graduate GSRs