Recommendations for Interinstitutional and Interdisciplinary Research Informed by a PIRE Graduate Student Cohort Perspective

Abstract

The U.S.–Taiwan Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE) “Building Extreme Weather Resiliency through Improved Weather and Climate Prediction and Emergency Response Strategies” was an NSF-funded grant between universities and institutions in the United States and Taiwan that intended to understand 1) weather forecast uncertainty during extreme precipitation events and 2) how emergency managers use such information to make decisions. In this reflective paper, graduate students from the project’s working groups, including climate, ensemble, microphysics, and decision science, share their experiences of being involved in this ambitious program. A notable strength of this PIRE was its opportunities for international collaboration and related cultural experiences; however, despite direct student involvement in PIRE, student experiences varied considerably (e.g., research experiences, cultural exposure). Recommendations for improvement are informed predominantly by U.S.-based graduate student experiences and are discussed with the intention of bolstering future interdisciplinary research for students and investigators. To this end, projects of this scale and scope could benefit from more frequent communication among leadership and research groups, as well as explicitly outlining and prioritizing interactions between groups to focus and strengthen collaboration toward the completion of interdisciplinary research goals.