The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture is providing more than $15 million for fellowships to train and develop the next generation of scientists who will lead agriculture into the future by solving current and future challenges facing society. NIFA will support pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and for the first time, undergraduate fellowships.
“As we look to the future and addressing challenges such as food and nutritional security, environmental sustainability, and health, we will need highly skilled scientists to address these concerns,” says Sonny Ramaswamy, NIFA director. “Fellowships at this level are an excellent way to give tomorrow’s leaders the skills, knowledge, and experience they need to be successful and make a difference.”
NIFA funds the Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Human Sciences Education and Literacy Initiative through the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI). The goal of the program is to support the intellectual talent needed to meet the challenges facing the nation’s agriculture, natural resource and food systems, which require innovative approaches in research, education, and extension.
Funded fellowships will span the six AFRI challenge areas (food security, water, climate change, food safety, childhood obesity prevention, and sustainable bioenergy) and the AFRI foundational program areas. The fellowship program also will fund projects that contain well-developed and highly-engaged mentoring and training activities. NIFA will fund single-function and multi-function research, education or extension projects.
Applications for the pre- and post-doctoral fellows are due on Feb. 11, 2015. Letters of intent for the undergraduate fellowships are due on Feb. 18, 2015, with full applications due May 6, 2015.
