CTR Receives New Grant Support

Tom Smith and CTR colleagues Katherine Gonder (University of Albany) and Nicola Anthony (University of New Orleans) received a five year $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation Partnerships in International Research and Education (NSF PIRE) program. This exciting project will unite senior investigators, junior researchers and students from the U.S., Africa and Europe into a common research and education plan centered in Gabon and Cameroon, Africa. A major emphasis of the PIRE project will be to collectively build an undergraduate and graduate educational program that will partner U.S. and African students in a common learning environment and provide them with cutting edge skills in the biological, environmental and social sciences. The overall research goal of the grant is to develop an integrated framework for protecting and managing central African biodiversity under climate change that is both informed by evolution and sensitive to the socioeconomic constraints of the region.