paleonet Tree of Life Competition for American Paleontologists

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Dear Paleonetters: 

Below is an announcement for a new competition at NSF entitled Tree of Life.
Although the Geology and Paleontology Program has contributed money to this
competition, it is being run out of the 
Systematic Biology Division.  There is approximately 10 million dollars
available for his competition and plans are for it tol continue annually for
the next 5 years. We expect competition to be light this year because of the
short notice, so you need to act fast.  It strongly encourages proposals
from interdisplinary teams.  We need paleontological participation in this
competition, whether as lead PIs or as key members of interdisciplinary
teams.  This is a great opportunity for biological and paleontological
research cooperation.  Go for it.

Rich Lane    
 
U.S. National Science Foundation 
Funding Opportunity for
ASSEMBLING THE TREE OF LIFE
(electronic solicitation NSF 02-074 for Fiscal Year 2002)

A flood of new information, from whole-genome sequences to inventories of
earth's biota, is transforming 21st century biology. Along with comparative
data on morphology, fossils, development, behavior, and interactions of all
forms of life on earth, these new data streams make even more critical the
need for an organizing framework for information retrieval, analysis, and
prediction. Phylogeny, the genealogical map for all lineages of life on
earth, provides an overall framework to facilitate information retrieval and
biological prediction. Currently, single investigators or small teams of
researchers are studying the evolutionary pathways of heredity within
particular phyla or domains. Assembly of a framework phylogeny, or Tree of
Life, for all 1.7 million described species requires a greatly magnified
effort by large teams working across institutions and disciplines. This is
the overall goal of the Assembling the Tree of Life activity. The National
Science Foundation invites research proposals from multidisciplinary teams
to conduct creative and innovative research that will resolve phylogenetic
relationships for large groups of organisms on the Tree of Life. Teams of
investigators also will be supported for projects in data acquisition,
analysis, algorithm development and dissemination in computational
phylogenetics and phyloinformatics.

Please see the Program Solicitation (NSF 02-074) soon to be posted on the
NSF website (www.nsf.gov <http://www.nsf.gov> in the Documents Online
section) for description of the activity and guidance on proposal
preparation; note the deadline of May 17, 2002 and the optional Letter of
Intent requested by March 29, 2002.

H. Richard Lane
Program Director, Geology and Paleontology
National Science Foundation
Ph. 703-292-4730
FAX: 703-292-9025
hlane@nsf.gov
Geology and Paleontology webpage:  
http://www.geo.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/showprog.pl?id=12&div=ear
Annual program deadlines: June 1 and December 1
NSF staff phone numbers: http://staff.nsf.gov