CompGen Fellow Application FY2018-2019

 

We encourage new applicants at this time. Current fellows who are not yet at the two-year limit are encouraged to apply for renewal. In addition to the application detailed below, current fellows should submit a two-page, 1,000-word summary of research progress from their current fellowship.

Applications should be e-mailed as a PDF file to katchley@illinois.edu.  The subject line for e-mail submissions should be “CompGen Fellow Application”

Deadline for submissions is April 20, 2018.

 

The application should contain the following information:

  • Name, department and campus address
  • Project description (500 words). See guidelines below.
  • One page resume, which should include information on GPA, major, degree status (e.g PhD candidate, ABD, MS student etc.), advisor(s), publications, conference presentations or proceedings, past fellowships and any awards or honors.
  • The names of up to two research advisors (one should be your major advisor, the other a collaborator or co-advisor) are required. In order to encourage applications from new research groups to participate, we will no longer require two advisors (this is a change from last year); however we encourage students to nominate a co-advisor or collaborator from another department if this fits with their proposal.
  • Note that supporting letters are required from both advisors, to be emailed separately to Katchley@illinois.edu  by the same deadline, April 20. Subject line for submissions should say “CompGen Fellow Application”.
  • The CompGen program aims to become self-sustaining so please include a statement (no more than 200 words)  on plans to apply for new funding during the fellowship period, in order to continue and expand the CompGen project after the end of the fellowship.

A template for the application is available here.

Applicants will be evaluated on their academic resume, letters of recommendation, the relevance of their project to CompGen, and past performance in the case of current fellows seeking renewal. We will evaluate project descriptions on the following criteria:

  • Fellowship recipients should propose projects that plan to leverage and help to advance the CompGen group of researchers and / or currently funded CompGen grants such as the NIH BD2K KnowENG project or the NSF-funded CompGen instrumentation award. Towards this end, we request projects in genomics applications, computational biology, data analysis or tools development.
  • For example, projects aimed at enabling drug discovery through the use of microbial genomes, mining protein structure data from genome sequences, processing genomes for agricultural applications or advancing human or animal genome science using computational methods could all be appropriate. Genomics or gene expression studies applied to the social sciences or humanities with computational methods can also be an appropriate focus.
  • Tools development could include accurate detection of genomic variation, development of statistical methods and methodologies for metagenomics, improvements in phylogeny reconstruction, information theory, compression and storage, reconstruction of gene networks, statistical methods, and construction of flexible software platforms.
  • A third example could be projects with potential to contribute to the hardware and software engineering of the CompGen instrumentation, such as optimization of the storage hierarchy, identification of primitives that are common across algorithms, visualization and toolkits for mathematical tools, tool flow optimization, and performance and reliability assessment.

The following rules will apply for FY2018/2019 awards:

1) There is a term limit of two years for students to be supported by CompGen fellowships. Students who have held a fellowship for two calendar years (two Fall and two Spring semesters) by Fall 2018 will not be eligible to re-apply.

2) We will require attendance of the advisors of all fellows at a meeting, to discuss collaboration and the forming of a collaborative and cohesive group of advisors and students. This meeting will be held as part of the CompGen meeting schedule.

3) We will require attendance of fellows at all CompGen meetings (usually held 2-4 times each semester). Permission should be obtained to miss more than one meeting per semester.

4) It is necessary for the applicant to prove that their project fits the definition of Computational Genomics. The priority is for the students’ project to bring novel, and potentially fundable, research into our collaborative, interdisciplinary group and to participate in our CompGen community. We particularly request proposals from students whose advisors have not previously benefited from CompGen support as fellowships or otherwise.

5) The CompGen NSF award expired in 2017, and we expect that all new and renewed fellows, and their advisors, will participate in grant proposals via CompGen.