Chris Field Department of Global Ecology Carnegie Institution 260 Panama Street Stanford, CA 94305 cfield@globalecology.stanford.edu (650) 462 1047 x 201
NEON is an ambitious program designed to let the nation’s ecological community ask and answer scientific questions at new levels of generality and scale. Taking full advantage of the opportunities presented by NEON will require making sure that the scientific community has the appropriate skills, leadership, and vision. The challenge of insuring the availability of young scientists who can assume the role of NEON users, planners, and leaders in coming years is too important to leave to chance. Our community needs a set of fellowships, explicitly intended to train the next generation of scientists who will insure the continuing success of the NEON venture. A program to train 10-20 new NSF/NEON Fellows per year would provide dramatic benefits for the NEON program and for the nation’s scientific future.
Targeted graduate fellowships are a proven tool in building expertise in emerging areas. NASA, DOE, and EPA have all had fellowships programs that made major contributions to the emergence of global-change science. NSF’s pre-doctoral fellowships are one of the nation’s premier pathways for training new scientists. A new set of fellowships, operated through the NSF pre-doctoral fellowship mechanisms but focused on the next generations of NEON leaders, would serve triple duty. It would (1) insure that a select group of young scientists is trained in the fields that can take full advantage of the NEON infrastructure, (2) provide exposure to and training in the NEON culture and management, encouraging the development of the next generation of NEON leaders, and (3) increase the amount of highly visible science using NEON by directing a set of the nation’s most talented graduate students toward NEON.