Students from eight North Carolina universities will be able to study food science and nutrition at the North Carolina Research Campus in Kannapolis, thanks to a $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The grant will be used to expose graduate students to what is known as a transdisciplinary approach to problem-solving, according to Jack Odle, Ph.D., William Neal Reynolds professor of nutritional biochemistry at North Carolina State University. Odle led the effort to apply for the grant and will direct the program.
Transdisciplinary education is a relatively new concept in academic circles that refers to the idea that many of today's scientific questions are so complex they cannot be adequately addressed by scientists or experts with expertise in only one area. Rather, scientists are likely to be more effective if their training stretches across disciplines.
The students will structure their training to address research questions that are transdisciplinary in nature.
Students accepted into the program, to be known as Kannapolis Scholars, will get about $38,000 during a 15-month period for tuition, housing and other expenses. A key element of the program is what Odle called a 10-week "rotation" each summer, working in a lab at the Kannapolis campus.
The eight universities with programs at Research Campus are:
- Appalachian State University (Human Performance Laboratory)
- Duke University (Translational Medicine Institute)
- North Carolina A&T State University (Center of Excellence for Post-Harvest Technologies)
- North Carolina Central University (Nutrition Research Program)
- North Carolina State University (Plants for Human Health Institute and N.C. MarketReady)
- University of North Carolina at Charlotte (Bioinformatics Research Center)
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Nutrition Research Institute)
- University of North Carolina at Greensboro (Center for Research Excellence in Bioactive Food Components)
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