This IGERT project will create a transformative graduate education program that trains students in technologies needed for manipulating pest genomes as well as methods needed to assess the environmental and social appropriateness of specific products of these manipulations. The concept of genetically manipulating a pest species to destroy or render it benign dates back to the 1940's, and there have been several major successes in using this approach. However, restricted tools of classical genetics limited the broader application of Genetic Pest Management. Recent advances in molecular genetics have provided much more precise techniques for manipulating the genomes of pests, and efforts are now underway for development and potential release of transgenic mosquitoes and transgenic agricultural pest species aimed at achieving Genetic Pest Management. The future of this pest management strategy will be determined by further technological advances, public attitudes to the novel technologies and products involved, and the creativity and wisdom of researchers and policy makers. Although esteemed scientific groups including the U.S. National Academy of Sciences have repeatedly emphasized that risk assessment for transgenic organisms should focus on the specific product and not the process, the legacy of genetically-engineered crop commercialization has made the logic behind this idea obscure to most people, including many scientists. For new applications of genetic engineering to be developed and judged appropriately, diverse social and cultural groups will need to more deeply examine the ramifications of each application. Broadly trained PhDs in biological and social sciences will facilitate this examination and help foster more sophisticated interactions among policy makers, academicians, and members of societies where Genetic Pest Management may be applied. Intellectual Merit of this IGERT derives from the fact that this could become the first graduate program in the world that is specifically training graduate students to understand, build, and assess impacts of transgenic organisms. All students will receive core transdisciplinary training that will encompass ethics, communication, economics, ecology, epidemiology, molecular biology, and population genetics. Each student will use expertise from at least two of these specialties in developing a dissertation. Our program is broad in integrating across diverse disciplines, but maintains the focus of students and faculty by specifically studying a small set of species that are targets for Genetic Pest Management. In each of the first years of the program, we will recruit graduate students in biological and social sciences. Each cohort of about six students, balanced across disciplines, will work together with faculty to choose a single target species as the focus of their dissertations. Focus on single species will challenge both student and faculty to work together, develop a common vocabulary, and understand how each other's disciplines operate. We are developing a set of core courses, which will provide all students with a basic toolkit for working in the field of Genetic Pest Management. Students specializing in the disciplines of a specific course will act as mentors to the other students taking the course. Broader Impacts of this IGERT fall into the following categories: 1) Improvement in the administration and extent of integrated graduate education at NCSU, 2) Impact on US integrated graduate education by evaluating a novel model of such integration, 3) Increased number of students from underrepresented groups that receive interdisciplinary education, 4) Improvement of methodologies for assessing and introducing new technologies, 5) Ph.D.s in biology and social sciences who have tools needed for future interdisciplinary, global work. 6) Education of local communities. Furthermore, most of the target pest species are of importance in poor nations, and we will use existing and newly developed partnerships to set up internships and dissertation projects in th

This research uses Do-It-Yourself Biology (DIY bio), a form of amateur science that makes relatively simple biotechnology practices accessible to individuals unaffiliated with academic or corporate laboratories (Kera, 2012; Landrain, Meyer, Perez, & Sussan, 2013), as a lens through which to consider citizen deliberations about the governance of science. Ethnographic research at DIY bio laboratories in the San Francisco area in California, and in Copenhagen, Denmark, will explore how the international DIY bio network defines synthetic biology and its governance; how it relates to academic and corporate scientists and other stakeholders; how United States Danish and European Union regulatory structures inform and respond to the DIY network; and what consequences these negotiations pose for genetically modified organisms and the future of genetic sciences. Investigating these questions with empirical data, contributes to a multidisciplinary conversation regarding how emerging technologies are constituted, legitimized and governed, and more broadly, how deliberative democracies operate.

Advocacy is a mechanism by which to champion causes and initiate change. Based on previous empirical research and a needs assessment conducted with local nonprofit executives, there is a need, and stated desire, for additional information on the legality of, and strategies for, nonprofit lobbying and advocacy. Funding is requested to develop a curriculum and implement workshops for nonprofit executives. Using a train the trainer model to incorporate student involvement, the project will conduct a total of six workshops in Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte involving approximately 100 nonprofit leaders. Building on existing community partnerships to facilitate the process, each area will receive two workshops. The outcomes expected from the workshops are: 1) participating nonprofit organizations will increase their knowledge of the regulatory rules regarding advocacy and lobbying and 2) will increase their knowledge of appropriate and effective activities and strategies used in advocacy and lobbying. The evidence of these increases in knowledge is that the organizations will become more involved in advocacy and lobbying and employ a wider and more effective array of strategies.