Two newly formed partnerships are helping ISU students and faculty learn about global issues and remain competitive with the rest of the world.

“The partnership is extremely important in an era of global science,” said Patrick Schnable, professor of agronomy. “It is important that the faculty connect with international science. It’s critical that they do. It’s a big world, and if we focus on local science we will lose touch with that.”

The Center of Plant Genomics has teamed with the Biological Sciences Department of the University of Bristol, United Kingdom. The Laurence H. Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Biological Statistics has formed a partnership with the Freie Universitat, Berlin, Germany.

“We have relationships with these groups between the faculty here and the faculty there,” said Hal Stern, professor of statistics. “Some of the research is already under way, and the agreements have students over there spending the summer and working in lab while Iowa State students go and learn about research groups.”

Stern said students share information between research projects and do group work on similar projects. He said the only requirement is to be a graduate student in one of the departments, and students in the bioinformatics and computational biology are the primary participants in the opportunity.

The interaction between biogenetic groups and international ties are important opportunities for students who decide to go overseas, Stern said.

“Research is [a] global area, and this provides Iowa State connections with international programs. Those are the kind of advantages we are trying to get,” he said. “It is an international opportunity for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows and faculty; we try to find an interesting opportunity to the research area.”

Schnable said the partnership with the University of Bristol was signed this past June, with no anticipated end date. Partnerships can go on indefinitely if both parties benefit, he said.

“The partnerships have collaborative research; they have tools we don’t have, and we have tools they don’t have,” he said. “The purpose is to broaden research and education for the students and faculty. There are no actual trips, it just depends if a member of the Plant Science Institute finds it feasible [to go].”