Impact Fellows Program Overview
Impact Fellows Program Overview
The Impact Fellows Program of the Predictive Biology Hub (PBH) enables postdocs and early career researchers to harness discoveries across the life sciences for societal benefit. Via a 7-month program of professional development training, networking, and mentoring, selected Impact Fellows at UMD will be prepared to transform and communicate insights from their use-driven research on human and environmental systems across scales. The program fosters community building, professional networking, and knowledge exchange via an invited speaker series and an annual PBH Research and Impact Symposium, including presentations of findings by the Impact Fellows.
Translating research discoveries and policy-relevant insights to a broader audience is challenging and requires time, investment, and innovative approaches to training. The Impact Fellows Program within PBH offers a recurring, intentional platform for training, networking and engagement to harness evidence-based discoveries for improving human and environmental health. The tools and resources developed by this cohort of research fellows will be made available to relevant communities, organizations, and policy makers, providing quantitative measures for strategic decision making. Insights from each fellow cohort will be presented collectively at the annual PBH Research and Impact Symposium and individually at society conferences and meetings where possible. We expand stakeholder engagement via targeted outreach and communication through social media, virtual information sessions, direct involvement of stakeholders in product development on a project-basis, and invitation of relevant stakeholders to the Spring Symposium.
Human and environmental systems face existential threats from reemerging and novel pathogens, climate change, and large-scale ecosystem disruption. These threats are shaped by complex and difficult-to-predict living systems that interact at scales from cells to organisms to ecosystems. Enabled by an ongoing revolution in ML/AI and massive, multimodal datasets, the Grand Challenge of the Predictive Biology Hub is to build the next-generation of predictive tools to mitigate pandemics, improve human health, and sustain vital ecosystems. Our team is prepared to establish such tools and deliver durable impact through an integrated program of research, education, and training.