Engineering Workforce Development
PreMiEr’s overarching engineering workforce development goal is to recruit, inspire and educate scientists, faculty, and students who will lead future advancement in convergent approaches to engineering the microbiome for solutions at the interface of health and the built environment.
Educational goals within PreMiEr result from engagement with a wide variety of stakeholders. These include not just the students directly involved with PreMiEr research, but also teachers, undergraduate students, community college students, K-12 students, industry partners, and the general public through outreach at museums and Do-It-Yourself (DIY) community science labs.
PreMiEr’s graduate training infrastructure was insprired by the interdisciplinary NSF-funded Research Training Grant for Integrative Bioinformatics for Investigating and Engineering Microbiomes (IBIEM). This partnership between Duke University and North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University brought together students with different backgrounds and training to learn processes for investigating microbiomes, interact with industry partners, and develop professional skills. These activities have been expanded to include university and industry partners and we have incorporated their specialized knowledge to help train the next generation of microbiome engineers.
