The ecological community has been pivotal to the development of synthesis research – research that combines data, models, and ideas from multiple scientific disciplines to solve problems. It has also embraced transdisciplinary approaches to address challenges facing coupled human-natural systems. Today the breadth and importance of scholarship targeting these challenges is expanding at an astonishing rate. SESYNC was conceived to support and extend this expansion through transdisciplinary environmental synthesis.
Mission
The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center ("SESYNC") will foster
actionable synthesis research and education related to the structure, functioning, and sustainability of socio-environmental systems.
Philosophy
The center is grounded in the philosophy that today's environmental problems can only be solved when natural and social scientists work with policy-makers to identify priorities and co-develop research questions. Addressing these questions will require a combination of fundamental, discovery-driven synthesis research combined with directed, translational scholarship.
Effective and leading-edge
socio-environmental synthesis emerges when the insights, ideas and innovations of a diverse research community are nourished with technological and organizational support. SESYNC will provide that support, including the substantial computational and operational support required to facilitate the novel methods and increasingly large and diverse scope required of socio-environmental synthesis.
Context and Partners
The National Science Foundation awarded funding for the Center to the University of Maryland (UM), with additional support coming from UM, the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (UMCES) and Resources for the Future (RFF). SESYNC will host researchers engaged in synthesis activities at its facility in Annapolis, MD and RFF's office in Washington, DC.
Other partners central to the visioning and development of the center proposal include social scientists, educational scholars and computer and sustainability scientists from: University of Michigan; University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS); Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research-UFZ (Germany); Environment for Development Initiative (EfD) at the University of Gothenburg (Sweden); Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies; Gallaudet University; Washington State University-Vancouver; and Coppin State University.
External Advisory Board (EAB)
The
EAB broadly represents the needs and interests of the user community. These advisers include many of the world’s leading scholars in areas relevant to SESYNC’s mission. The EAB will have approximately 16-20 members to accommodate the anticipated workload, reflect the breadth of disciplines involved, and promote diversity with respect to race, gender, disability status, and ethnicity.
