News
Welcome to the NatSci news page! Check back often to learn about the latest innovations, discoveries and accomplishments of our faculty, staff, students and alumni.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Charles Drew Science Scholars program, which has supported the academic success and well-being of nearly 2,000 underrepresented minority students in the College of Natural Science at MSU since the 1970s.
Casey Henley, assistant professor and director of online programs for MSU's Neuroscience Program housed in the College of Natural Science, took first place in the “Best Fully Online” category of the 2019 AT&T Faculty-Staff Instructional Technology Awards competition.
In the 1960s, MSU biophysicist Barnett Rosenberg and his team discovered the cancer-fighting properties of platinum—a discovery that led to the development of two life-saving cancer therapy drugs—cisplatin and carboplatin. This legacy and the royalties earned from these two drugs are now helping to support the next generation of cancer research at MSU.
Kristin Parent, J.K. Billman, Jr. M.D. Endowed Research Professor, received a 2019 Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigators in the Pathogenesis of Infections Disease award, which includes a 5-year grant totaling $500,000 to support research investigating an enormous virus known as the Samba virus.
MSU microbial ecologist Ashley Shade and her team have been awarded a three-year, $750,000 USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) grant to investigate the seed microbiome of the common bean.
A new study led by researchers at Michigan State University and Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute has revealed that warming temperatures affect native and non-native flowering plants differently, which could change the look of local landscapes over time.
MSU researcher Mariah Meek recently received a two-year, $633,000 grant from the Delta Stewardship Council and the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to study the declining Chinook salmon in the California Central Valley using an improved genomics tool to characterize life history diversity and promote resilience.
A graduate program and a doctoral student in the MSU College of Natural Science were recently honored by MSU with an Outstanding Graduate Program Community Award and an MSU Graduate School Outstanding Doctoral Student Mentor Award, respectively.
Two years ago, a team of scientists, including MSU geomicrobiologist Matt Schrenk, visited Costa Rica’s subduction zone to find out if microbes can affect the cycle of carbon moving from Earth’s surface into the deep interior. According to their new study recently published in Nature, the answer is yes, they can.
Three outstanding professors from the MSU College of Natural Science--Charles "Lee" Cox, David Hyndman and Angela Wilson--were among six selected to be part of an elite cohort of Academic Leadership Program Fellows for 2019-2020 selected by the Big Ten Academic Alliance.