National Evolutionary Synthesis Center launches in Durham, North Carolina

The National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), in Durham, North Carolina, has launched. The NESCent website is www.nescent.org. Established with a $15 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the center is a collaboration of Duke University, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill. The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS: www.aibs.org) is providing education and outreach services to NESCent on a sub-contract. The National Science Foundation's (NSF) press release for NESCent is available at: www.nsf.gov/od/lpa/newsroom/pr.cfm?ni=15300000000135.

NSF's goals for NESCent--which is modeled after the highly successful National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS), at the University of California, Santa Barbara (www.nceas.ucsb.edu)--are to "serve the needs of the evolutionary biology community by providing mechanisms to foster synthetic, collaborative, cross-disciplinary studies. It will play a pivotal role in the further unification of the biological sciences as it draws together knowledge from disparate biological fields to increase our general understanding of biological design and function. Finally, the center will play a critical role in organizing and synthesizing evolutionary knowledge that will be useful to policy makers, government agencies, educators and society." (From the April 2003 NSF program announcement).

NESCent contact: Cliff Cunningham, NESCent Director, Duke University, cliff@duke.edu

AIBS contact: Richard O'Grady, AIBS Executive Director, rogrady@aibs.org

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