Predicting an organism’s phenotype remains one of the central challenges of modern life science. Understanding how different scales of biological organization from the genome to the environment determine phenotypes and their consequences is a critical step in solving societal problems of human health, food security, and response to global climate change. The next generation of scientists, whether they work in academic careers or other settings, must be able to integrate and communicate their research across these scales and bring modern computational and quantitative approaches to bear on big data.

EXPAND seeks to address these central challenges by recruiting, training, and mentoring a diverse community of life sciences students with a broad intellectual platform to break down historic disciplinary silos. Broad scientific training is complemented with stage-specific professional development and exposure to a wide range of non-academic career opportunities.