A recent editorial in BioScience, authored by Drs. Charles Fenster and Scott Collins, calls for restoring the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) program in the Divisions of Environmental Biology (DEB) and Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO).
“DDIGs facilitated the development of independent researchers and provided the opportunity for early-career scientists to chart their own research paths,” the authors note. The program was terminated for DEB and IOS in 2017 due to increased proposal workload and changes in agency priorities.
The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) is currently inviting individuals to endorse this call for the reestablishment of the DDIG program in DEB and IOS. We also encourage you to share this opportunity with others within your network.
AIBS plans to reach out to NSF-BIO with the list of endorsements and an appeal to consider new, alternative approaches to meet the goals of the DDIG program.
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