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By Rich Kildare

Below is an interview about the IGERT program at UCSB, which is focused on Network Science. Click on the image for the video. For the text alternative, see the video transcript below...


 

The following is a transcript of my interview with Tim Robinson, Education Coordinator for the Network Science IGERT program at UCSB.
I have included the questions (omitted in the video) in the following transcript for clarity.

Rich Kildare: What is IGERT?
Tim Robinson: IGERT stands for Integrative Graduate and Research Traineeship. It is a National Science Foundation initiative that is meant to promote interdisciplinary training among graduate students. It’s a traineeship rather than a fellowship, so the idea is you are given money to learn a new skill or promote some sort of skill set. In this case, our particular IGERT is on Network Science. It is meant to support this Network Science research program. So IGERT is the funding the mechanism to launch the program, to get the program off the ground.

All IGERTs, in every university — they have some interdisciplinary aspect to them. In our case, it is seven departments coming together to study this broad thing called, “Network Science and Big Data.” So at UCSB our seven departments are Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Ecology Evolution and Marine Biology, Sociology, Communication, and Geography. And each one of these different disciplines deals with some aspect of Big Data, large Networks and how to manipulate the data in an efficient manner.

RK: How can students get involved in the program?
Tim Robinson: There are two ways a student can get involved in IGERT. One is as an incoming, first-year graduate student. And if that’s the case, you jump into this traineeship and you receive funding from the National Science Foundation for two full years, at $30,000 a year, plus full payment of all fees, and tuition and health insurance.

Because it comes from the National Science Foundation, it is only available to US citizens and permanent residents. Non-residents can join the program and participate in the research and programmatic activities, but they cannot receive that level of funding, the IGERT funding.

The other way you can get involved, students can get involved, in the IGERT program is by jumping into our seminars — we hold weekly seminars — or some of our coursework. We have two foundational classes on Network Science, one in the fall, one in the winter. And we also have these team projects/lab rotations that we call Network Science Modules. And anyone is welcome to become involved in those.

This is our first year of running the IGERT program so we are still setting up those modules and expanding on them and defining them. I think in future years we’ll have a lot of these team projects up and running for computer science students, communication students, mechanical engineers; new graduate students to participate and to help define their future PhD work.

RK: What does the future hold for IGERT at UCSB?
Tim Robinson: The future of our IGERT program is to institutionalize this concept of Network Science Research across those seven partnering disciplines, hopefully more. It would be wonderful if we could also bring in other… more molecular biology perhaps, and physics and environmental science; other disciplines that deal with Big Data. But in the short term, the idea is to…again, institutionalize this idea that a graduate student can come in here and work on some sort of aspect of Network Science research. So, it would be wonderful if somebody were to come into the Computer Science Department… a first year grad student… or… so a first year grad student would come in with this idea of wanting to study some element of gene networks and mapping gene networks. So, we would give him, not only the programming tools necessary to manipulate Big Data, but also the experience with gene networks, or brain networks, or some other kind of network that a student normally wouldn’t have access to in the Computer Science Department. Or, the flip side of that is true… it would be great if we had a biologist come in here and want to learn how to manipulate this large data set, but that biologist might have very little or no programming skills. So he or she could participate in such a program as ours and develop those skills separate from becoming a computer scientist. His programming would be specific to the idea of dealing with networks. The same would be true of a sociology student or a communication student.

Social networks are huge right now. They’re just growing as the data to store the information online becomes more affordable and better; you’re going to see those social networks grow. And somebody’s going to need to study them and study the… maybe the qualitative aspects of social networks.

RK: Where can one find more information about IGERT?
Tim Robinson: All of the information of our particular IGERT program is online; that’s networkscience.igert.ucsb.edu. More general information about IGERT programs can be found at igert.org. It is a central location for all the IGERTs across the country.

RK: Thank you for your time.
Tim Robinson: You’re welcome.