Academic

Oregon State University (www.orst.edu) is initiating a new interdisciplinary PhD program in Ecosystem Informatics that combines research in computer science, mathematics, and ecosystem sciences (www.geo.oregonstate.edu/igert). Graduate students in this program work in cross-disciplinary teams to solve fundamental and applied research programs in ecosystem science areas. The program begins with a 2-week orientation at OSU's Andrews Experimental Forest in late summer. This includes one week of field work and one week of data analysis and modeling, as well as an opportunity to get to know the faculty and students in the program. All students in the program participate in a one-year core course that introduces the scientific and technological challenges of ecosystem science and advanced computer science methods. Students are expected to do a 3-6 month internship with a national or international organization. Several organizations around the world have agreed to host interns from our program (all internship expenses are paid).

We are seeking students interested in the following computer science areas:

• software engineering for supporting ecological modeling including model construction, experimentation, and validation,
• mathematical methods for modeling complex ecosystems,
• spatio-temporal database systems,
• management of diverse ecological databases including data discovery via the semantic web,
• machine learning, data mining, and pattern recognition with applications to ecological modeling, change detection, and novel instrumentation for ecological science.

For more information, contact Prof. Tom Dietterich (tgd@cs.orst.edu).
Web: http://www.cs.orst.edu/~tgd