Scientific societies and organizations, as well as individual researchers, have expressed support for a BioScience editorial by Drs. Charles Fenster and Scott Collins that calls for restoring the Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant (DDIG) program within the Divisions of Environmental Biology (DEB) and Integrative Organismal Systems (IOS) at the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Biological Sciences Directorate (BIO).
“DDIGs facilitated the development of independent researchers and provided the opportunity for early-career scientists to chart their own research paths,” the authors note. The program was terminated for DEB and IOS in 2017 due to increased proposal workload and changes in agency priorities.
Following the publication of the editorial, AIBS invited its member societies and organizations, partners, and individuals to endorse the call for the reestablishment of the DDIG program in DEB and IOS. In response, 26 scientific societies and organizations, listed below, and more than 280 individuals have expressed support for the DDIG program and its goals.
Organizational endorsements:
American Ornithological Society
American Society of Mammalogists
American Society of Naturalists
American Society of Primatologists
Animal Behavior Society
Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation
Biophysical Society
Botanical Society of America
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Science
Committee on Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago
Department of Natural Resource Management, South Dakota State University
Ecological Society of America
Entomological Society of America
Field Museum of Natural History
Helminthological Society of Washington
Institute of Environment, Florida International University
Natural Science Collections Alliance
Organization of Biological Field Stations
Organization for Tropical Studies
Phycological Society of America
Portland State University
Puerto Rican Ornithological Society, Inc (SOPI)
Richard Gilder Graduate School-American Museum of Natural History
Society for the Study of Evolution
University of Connecticut
University of Michigan, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Click here to view the individual endorsements.
Stay current on the latest science policy news. Subscribe to our bi-weekly AIBS Public Policy Report.