Proposals

Abstract

Undergraduates and graduate students are increasingly engaged in research projects that exploit very large data sets. In the Biosciences, many of us investigate the structure of certain molecules, cells, organisms, or landscapes. Our work is greatly facilitated by improvements in data acquisition and analysis. Today, new technologies make it easier to capture many thousands of images with unprecedented detail. Fortunately, the Department of Biology has cutting-edge equipment that is available for student researchers to capture structural information at multiple scales. Our newest additions include a serial block face scanning electron microscope and a microcomputed tomographic scanner. However, once images are captured, it can take us days, weeks, or even months of hard work to select specific datasets from many for our downstream data image analyses. This proposal requests STF funding for four interactive pen displays for undergraduate and graduate student researchers in the sciences in order to select and analyze digital data collected by the Biology Department's Imagining Facilities.