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NRT Program (2015-2020)

In 2015, University of Maryland Language Scientists launched a new graduate training program supported by a 5 year, $3 million training grant from the National Science Foundation.

NSF’s Research Traineeship (NRT) grants are the successor to their IGERT program for interdisciplinary graduate education in science and engineering. Only 8 of these prestigious awards were made nationwide in the first year of the program (from a total of 262 proposals). NRT “encourage[s] the development of bold, new, potentially transformative, and scalable models for STEM graduate training”.

The trajectories of scientific research careers are changing and there is an increasing demand for researchers who can work collaboratively not only across academic disciplines, but with industry, government, schools, and internationally to address complex global challenges. Maryland’s university-wide community of language researchers, our interdisciplinary approach to language science, and our experience with integrated graduate training programs all put us in a strong position to develop a training model geared towards these demands.

Our NRT program includes signature research and training activities that build on the experiences gained from the IGERT and Language Science Fellows programs. NRT combines an inherently interdisciplinary “Beyond Big Data” research theme with a strong emphasis on student leadership, science communication, outreach, public policy activities and preparation for diverse careers.

We expect up to 50 students to participate in the program from 2015-2020, and the program will impact graduate training across all language science fields.