NESCent, the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, Launches

16 December 2004. The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), in Durham, North Carolina, has launched. The NESCent website is www.nescent.org. Established with a $15 million five-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the center is a collaboration of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. AIBS is providing education and outreach services to NESCent on a sub-contract.

The goals for NESCent — which is modeled after the highly successful National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), at the University of California, Santa Barbara — are to serve the needs of the evolutionary biology community by providing mechanisms to foster synthetic, collaborative, cross-disciplinary studies. It will play a pivotal role in the further unification of the biological sciences as it draws together knowledge from disparate biological fields to increase understanding of biological design and function. The center will play a critical role in organizing and synthesizing evolutionary knowledge that will be useful to policy makers, government agencies, educators, and society.

See www.nescent.org for information on how to apply for postdoctoral fellowships, sabbaticals, working groups, and network catalysis meetings.

NESCent contact: Kathleen Smith, NESCent Director, Duke University,

AIBS contact: Richard O'Grady, AIBS Executive Director,

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