EPSCoR Graduate Fellowship Program (EGFP): Idaho WildFIRE QUEST

About This Grant

The National Science Foundation (NSF) EPSCoR Graduate Fellowship Program (EGFP) supports EGFP-designated institutions and programs in EPSCoR jurisdictions by providing funding for graduate fellowships for new or continuing EGFP-eligible applicants. EGFP supports a total of three years of stipend and associated cost-of-education (COE) allowance for each NSF EPSCoR Graduate Fellow. This award at the University of Idaho will support nine (9) EPSCoR Graduate Fellows whose research will align with the unique goals and programs supported by the Directorate for Biological Sciences (BIO), Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE), Directorate for Engineering (ENG), Directorate for Geosciences (GEO), Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS), Directorate for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (SBE), Directorate for STEM Education (EDU), and the Office of Integrative Activities (OIA). There is a national need to develop and advance innovative approaches to increase the resilience of communities and landscapes in the United States to the impacts of wildfires. Several recent syntheses have called for multidisciplinary research to solve these complex problems. This project will directly address these challenges by cultivating the next generation of research leaders in innovative approaches that advance knowledge of community and landscape resilience in the face of changing wildland fire regimes. The project will leverage the extensive institutional expertise and multi-disciplinary leadership in wildland fire science at the University of Idaho to guide EPSCoR Graduate Fellows in advancing three research themes, each seeking to improve our knowledge of how fire impacts communities and landscapes: 1) mechanistic knowledge and tools; 2) dynamic ecosystem feedback and trajectories; and 3) integrated human-environment systems. The Fellows will be mentored by faculty whose research covers the full range of wildland fire science research, who have access to graduate certificates, and who have access to resources within two current NSF EPSCoR projects where wildfires are a significant focus. The project's intellectual merit includes increasing knowledge associated with how communities in the United States can become more resilient to the impacts of wildfires. The project will also assess the efficacy of a novel approach to create graduate Fellow cohorts to solve multidisciplinary problems, where each Fellow will be enrolled in one of three University-wide interdisciplinary doctoral degrees: Bioinformatics and Computational Biology, Environmental Science, and Water Resources. This will enable the project to engage the Fellows in a unique combination of existing areas of academic research strengths in the geosciences, biological sciences, social sciences, and resilience science, and build their strengths and research capacity in computational modeling, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, to provide analytical outcomes to proactively address the impacts of wildfires on energy-water systems through the lens of weather, population, and technological change. In terms of broader impacts, the project will engage Fellows within a dynamic mentoring program and a robust and institutionalized graduate mental health support program system. Additionally, Fellows will have the opportunity to participate in the Environmental Education and Science Communication Graduate Certificate program that will enable them to develop transferable skills in science communication, outreach, and interdisciplinary thinking. Fellows will also help the research team further develop novel areas of research (e.g., pyro-aerobiology, pyro-ecophysiology) and help create new sub-disciplines of wildfire science and engineering that will occur at the intersection of increasing community resilience. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.