News

MSU biochemist Robert Quinn has spent years studying the biochemistry of coral bleaching, a heat-induced response to stress causing it to turn white. Bleaching is damaging to reefs and is expected to increase due to climate change. While Quinn has discovered unique betaine lipids in coral that are markers of resistance to coral bleaching, very little is known about them. During a literature review of these lipids, Quinn discovered that MSU colleague, Christoph Benning, had written on the subject. This connection led to the two scientists teaming up on a $1.9 million NSF grant to study the role that betaine lipids play in coral bleaching.

Mathematicians at Michigan State will use a five-year, $1.9 million National Science Foundation training grant to amplify the university’s success in math research by creating communities of undergraduates, graduates, post-graduates and faculty working in topology and related mathematical areas. The goal: To create environments that nurture mentorship and connections and ultimately open doors to more inclusivity and broader recruitment.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded MSU nearly $3 million to create a graduate program that will help usher in a new era of STEM discoveries using the power of machine learning. Project leader Daniel Appelö and his team are working with the NSF to ensure the United States can maintain its leadership in the machine learning space — especially in science, technology, engineering and math applications — for generations to come.

Researchers from the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory have received a $1.1 million National Science Foundation grant to bring research into the undergraduate classroom. The project, which looks at how the chloroplast reacts to stress responses in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana, will allow students to not only learn techniques and concepts used in the lab, but to learn why researchers do what they do.

The ability of a plant to grow and reproduce – including the crops we rely on – is directly associated with the motility of organelles within the plant. Understanding how these organelles move is key to developing crops that can survive and thrive in stressful environmental conditions. MSU plant biologist Jianping Hu, has received a 4-year, $900,000 National Science Foundation grant to study the motility of cellular energy organelles in the common mustard plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. The knowledge gained will provide fundamental insights into the principles associated with the motility of plant organelles and perspectives on how these molecular machineries evolved.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a $399,865 Campus Cyberinfrastructure Planning Grant to Michigan State University to create the MSU Data Machine—an accessible supercomputer optimized for such data-intensive research as machine learning and artificial intelligence applications. Several MSU College of Natural Science faculty members—Brian O’Shea, Matthew Schrenk and Phoebe Zarnetske—are playing key roles in the project, dubbed the MSU Data Machine.

Michigan State University and Spelman College in Atlanta are teaming up to create a new educational pipeline for data science, one of the fastest growing fields in the country. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that, by 2026, the nation will have created more than 11 million data science jobs. The duo are teaming up to create a new degree program to help make data science more inclusive and equitable.

MSU plant molecular biologist Michael Thomashow, along with colleagues Brad Day and Yongsig Kim, will use a $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant to better understand the connection between how plants navigate temperature changes and fight off pathogens. By understanding the biology behind how plants respond to a variety of stresses, scientists will be better equipped to help farmers and their crops adapt to a changing planet.

It takes one to know one—a community that is. With that in mind, a community of pioneering scientists from MSU’s College of Natural Science and the University of California, Los Angeles, came together to design a multifaceted approach to investigating one of the most complex and abundant communities on Earth—microbiomes. The first-of-its-kind ecological investigation into the complexity of gut microbiological communities is funded by the NSF and will provide new insights into microbial community interaction from mechanistic models and network theory and lead the way for numerous applications in health and human and natural systems.

MSU seismologist Songqiao “Shawn” Wei is the recipient of a $501,597 National Science Foundation Early CAREER Award to conduct a series of seismic attenuation studies on regional and global scales. These systematic investigations will potentially advance our understanding of seismic interpretation, upper-mantle dynamics, and material recycling in the Earth’s interior.