Welcome to the new CiBER-IGERT PROGRAM at the
University of California at Berkeley!

IGERT Traineeship Flier - Download

Berkeley’s Center for interdisciplinary Biological-inspiration in Education and Research (CiBER) has been awarded an Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Grant by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The five-year grant supports the development of an interdisciplinary doctoral program training biology and engineering trainees how to learn from nature – a process termed biological inspiration.

Goal: Train biology and engineering PhD students how to develop mutualistic teams which energize transformative, interdisciplinary, basic research and translate fundamental discoveries into societal benefits. Current challenges in science, engineering, industry and society demand research-based skills as well as the ability to collaborate on diverse, interdisciplinary teams, but this is seldom taught explicitly. Our new training program focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration in an effort to translate biological discoveries into engineered devices, and to apply new engineering approaches to generate hypotheses and tools for biological research.

Research Areas: Our training program uniquely focuses on how motion systems work and how their designs enable them to maintain functionality in environments that are spatially complex and vary with time. The study of motion from an integrative systems approach is a research domain ideally suited to exemplify the synergy between biologically inspired design and engineering-based biological research.

1. Mechanics of systems that locomote and maneuver in complex, changing habitats;
2. Control mechanisms and learning that yield robust performance for motion systems in variable environments;
3. Structure and function of materials, sensors, and actuators that enable or influence motion in complex settings;
4. Evolution of motion systems in the natural world.

CiBER-IGERT: University of California at Berkeley
Principle Investigator and Director: Professor Robert Full (rjfull@berkeley.edu)
Program Coordinator: Pauline Jennings (pauline@berkeley.edu)
Department of Integrative Biology, UC Berkeley,
3060 Valley Life Sciences Bldg #3140
Berkeley CA 94720-3140.
Copyright © 2009 UC Regents; all rights reserved. Used by permission only.