News

There's a popular saying that people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It turns out that there's another reason not to ignore history according to new research from Michigan State University published in the journal Ecology. Experts and a unique research site at MSU are showing how the history of land being restored shapes the future and success of conservation efforts. With support from the National Science Foundation, this new study focuses on one of those factors — when a plot is restored — through the lens of biodiversity.

MSU mathematician Francois Greer, assistant professor in College of Natural Science, was recently honored as the inaugural Van Haften Endowed Professor in Deductive Literacy. Greer, a leading young figure in the field of algebraic geometry, studies enumerative algebraic geometry, modular forms and Hodge theory. An investiture ceremony congratulating Greer was held Nov. 3 at MSU’s Wharton Center.

Michigan State University’s Kellogg Biological Station (KBS) has been named a national and international role model for its quantifiable commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion in the organization and its people. The Organization of Biological Field Stations is honoring KBS with the 2022 Advancing Equity Award for its across-the-board dedication to an inclusive environment.

If there’s news about amphibians these days, odds are it’s not going to be good. A pathogenic fungus has been decimating populations around the world for about forty years and counting, pushing many species to extinction. That’s why researchers have been stunned to see one genus — Atelopus or harlequin frogs — defying the odds. Now, new research from ecologists at Michigan State University and collaborators in Ecuador is setting the stage for an unprecedented underdog story — or, if you will, an underfrog story.

For just the second time in human history, researchers have identified a source of high-energy neutrinos — ghostly subatomic particles produced in some of the universe’s most extreme environments. The discovery was made by an international collaboration led by Michigan State University and Technical University of Munich researchers at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. The team announced its findings on Nov. 3 in an online webinar and will publish its study Nov. 4 in the journal

Michigan State University plant biologist Federica Brandizzi and her team are collaborators with Stanford University's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory on a  a three-year, $507,264 grant from Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science’s Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program to build new microscopes that allow scientists to look into plant cells like never before. The grant aims to create optical and X-ray multimodal-hybrid microscope systems for live imaging of plant stress responses and microbial interactions.

A Spartan-led collaboration, headed by MSU chemist Kenneth Merz, is modernizing software and computational methods for next-gen hardware to help accelerate drug discovery, materials development and more. The team is working to ensure a powerful software tool known as Amber is optimized for the high-performance computers of today and tomorrow.

MSU physics education researcher Danny Caballero is being honored by the American Physical Society (APS) for building the village needed to provide physics students with crucial computing skills. Caballero is part of the Partnership for Integrating Computation into Undergraduate Physics (PICUP) Team receiving the APS Excellence in Education Award. The team rallied hundreds of physics educators focused on helping students develop valuable computational skills and giving those educators the needed support and resources to make meaningful changes in curriculum.

MSU graduate student Julie Butler is the recipient of a highly competitive Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program grant. Butler is one of 44 outstanding graduate students from across the nation representing 36 states in the program selected to conduct research at 12 DOE national laboratories. Butler will conduct her research on applications of machine learning to coupled cluster studies of infinite fermionic matter at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. 

Michigan State University and the University of California, Merced, are working to get a better handle on the huge problem of climate change with the help of some very small organisms. With $12.5 million from the National Science Foundation, MSU researchers Elizabeth Heath-Heckman and Kevin Liu are teaming up with UC Merced’s Michele Nishiguchi to launch an institute that focuses on a new angle in climate change.

Two faculty members in the Michigan State University College of Natural Science (NatSci)—Danny Caballero and Huey-Wen Lin—have been selected as 2022 Fellows of the American Physical Society (APS). This distinction recognizes researchers for significant and innovative contributions to physics. Each year, less than one-half of one percent of the APS membership earns fellowship status.

Major depressive disorder affects women twice as often as men, but researchers are still trying to identify the reasons why. Researchers at Michigan State University have recently received a $3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to continue their investigation of how male and female brains respond to stress differently and how testosterone could be the key to increasing resilience.

MSU microbial ecologist James Tiedje has been awarded the 2023 Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Society of Microbiology to honor his sustained contributions to the microbiological sciences. Tiedje’s major contributions include his foundational discovery of the microbial ecology of the nitrogen cycle; a paradigm-shifting discovery of microbes that dechlorinate pollutants; and his findings surrounding the use of genomics and metagenomics to understand microbial speciation, community structure and ecological functions.

Michigan State University chemist Marcos Dantus is the 2023 recipient of the American Chemical Society’s Ahmed Zewail Award in Ultrafast Science and Technology. This prestigious award recognizes outstanding and creative contributions to fundamental discoveries or inventions in ultrafast science and technology in the areas of physics, chemistry, biology or related fields.

MSU and Purdue University researchers are teaming up to create a new building material. It’ll be stronger than steel and have the power to heal itself while pulling greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. The U.S. DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, or ARPA-E, has awarded the research team, which includes MSU College of Natural Science microbiologist Gemma Reguera, nearly $1 million to develop “living” wood, a first-of-its-kind concept using the natural activity of microbes implanted in wood.

Six MSU College of Natural Science faculty members – Jonas Becker, Danny Caballero, François Greer, Tom O’Halloran, Timothy Warren and Aman Yadav – were among 36 honored at the 2022 Michigan State University Investiture for Endowed Faculty on Sept. 14 at the Wharton Center for Performing Arts in the Great Cobb Hall.

As climate change causes more frequent drought conditions, MSU researchers are learning more about the biology of plants, fungi and microscopic animals that survive on very little water in a drought or desiccation state. This research is part of a $12.5 million multi-institution and cross-disciplinary National Science Foundation grant as part of the NSF Biology Integration Institutes.

Nitrogen, like it’s neighbors carbon and oxygen in the periodic table, is an element we can’t live without. Although science has developed much of the nitrogen cycle’s big picture, MSU chemist Timothy Warren and his team are drilling down into its fundamental chemical details to create a more intimate understanding of the nitrogen cycle that could lead to holistic solutions for ensuring a healthy balance of nitrogen, wherever it’s needed. The team recently released two peer-reviewed reports on that front in the journals Nature Chemistry and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Angela K. Wilson, John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at MSU, is recipient of the 2022 National Honorary Member Award from Iota Sigma Pi, a national honor society for women in chemistry. The award is the organization’s highest honor, bestowed triennially on an outstanding woman chemist. Wilson, a professor in the Department of Chemistry in the MSU College of Natural Science, is also NatSci associate dean for strategic initiatives and current president of the American Chemical Society.

Affirmation from the MSU Council of Deans to the MSU Board of Trustees and other members of the MSU community reaffirming their commitment to the University's values and to applying and upholding the University's policies, procedures and core values of integrity, respect, excellence, equity and collaboration.

Gemma Reguera and Amy Ralston have joined the Michigan State College of Natural Science (NatSci) leadership team as associate dean for faculty affairs and development and associate dean for graduate studies, respectively. Their appointments were effective Aug. 16.

When thinking about why breast cancer develops, it is critical to understand how normal development works. Recently, the National Institutes of Health awarded MSU physiology professor Eran Andrechek a five-year, $2.5 million grant to fund his research project of defining the role of the repressor E2F5 gene in mammary gland development.  in addition to a providing better understanding of the developmental biology, Andrechek hopes the findings will lead to further research on breast cancer.

MSU researchers and colleagues at the University of California Berkeley, the University of South Bohemia and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have helped reveal the most detailed picture to date of important biological “antennae.” The findings, published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature, shed new light on microbial photosynthesis, and could also help researchers remediate harmful bacteria in the environment, develop artificial photosynthetic systems for renewable energy and enlist microbes in sustainable manufacturing that starts with the raw materials of carbon dioxide and sunlight.

Michigan State University researchers, led by earth and environmental scientist Jeffrey Freymueller and his team, could help predict seasonal changes in the Great Lakes Basin by developing a new groundwater model to monitor surface and groundwater flow with a $960K grant from the National Science Foundation.

MSU ecologists in Elise Zipkin's Qualitative Ecology lab in the College of Natural Science have developed a mathematical framework that could help monitor and preserve biodiversity without breaking the bank. This framework or model takes low-cost data about relatively abundant species in a community and uses it to generate valuable insights on their harder-to-find neighbors. The journal Conservation Biology published the research as an Early View article on Aug. 25

The Brandizzi lab at MSU is sending seeds to space aboard NASA’s Artemis I mission to explore how humanity can sustain itself outside of Earth. In previous experiments, scientists have learned that plants grown in space make lower levels of amino acids that keep their seedlings strong on Earth. The same amino acids would also be nutritious for people who eat the plants. Brandizzi’s lab has selected seeds that are enriched with those amino acids and is sending those into space along with regular seeds, allowing them to see if fortifying the seeds on Earth could create a more sustainable path to growing healthier plants — and food — in space.

A.J. Robison, associate professor in Michigan State University’s Department of Physiology, has been appointed director of Neuroscience Program at MSU, effective Aug. 16. He replaces Jim Galligan, who is stepped down from the position after 11 years.

MSU biochemist Robert Quinn’s recent discovery related to bile acids produced by gut microbes represents a paradigm shift of 170 years of research in the field. Quinn, an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the College of Natural Science, received a one-year, $100,000 grant from the Global Grants for Gut Health to dig deeper into this discovery and how it changes scientists’ understanding of the human gut microbiome.

Plant gene regulation dictates how plants grow under differing environmental conditions, and Michigan State University researchers from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) are looking at how different genes control light-dependent processes in Arabidopsis thaliana. Their research was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

Michigan State University researchers have found that the Zika virus can halt an embryo’s development in the earliest stages of pregnancy, signaling that the risks posed by the virus are greater than previously appreciated. The team from MSU also hopes its work, which was performed with mouse models, will inspire more studies examining how other diseases, such as cytomegalovirus — the leading infectious cause of birth defects — affect early pregnancy. Their findings were recently published in the journal Development.