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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.
January 18, 2023
Michigan State University has received a $5 million grant from the MSU Research Foundation to advance its world-class program in the plant sciences and critical research in the mitigation of and adaptation to global climate change. The grant complements the university’s and the state of Michigan’s investment in the greenhouse complex and the proposed new plant and environmental sciences building.
November 15, 2022
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.
October 21, 2022
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.
June 15, 2022
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.
June 6, 2022
MSU graduate student Hannah Christine Berg is the recipient of a highly competitive Department of Energy Office of Science Graduate Student Research Program grant. She is one of 80 outstanding graduate students representing 27 states in the program, each of whom was selected through peer review by external scientific experts. Berg, a Ph.D. student in nuclear astrophysics working at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, or FRIB, will conduct her research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.
March 14, 2022
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.
February 16, 2022
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is enlisting experts and resources at Michigan State University to bolster the state’s fight against COVID, foodborne illnesses and more. With three grants totaling more than $5 million, MSU and health care partners will help build up Michigan’s capacity to respond to the current pandemic and future pathogens through the newly created Michigan Sequencing Academic Partnership for Public Health Innovation and Response, or MI-SAPPHIRE.
February 8, 2022
Michigan State University is one of five institutions selected by the Association of American Universities, or AAU, to pioneer new and better approaches for evaluating teaching and learning in undergraduate STEM departments. MSU’s Department of Chemistry has been enlisted by AAU to serve as one of the leaders in creating more meaningful and productive methods that can be implemented not only at Michigan State, but at any university.
January 19, 2022
Through MSU’s Creating Inclusive Excellence Grant (CIEG) program, two new projects, one led by a NatSci graduate student, and a second by two NatSci faculty members will focus on improving STEM for historically excluded groups. Doctoral student Toby SantaMaria will use the grant to increase accessibility and inclusivity in the graduate school application process. Faculty members Stephen Thomas and Julie Libarkin will implement a system for mentoring faculty on how to facilitate inclusive experiences. CIEG supports projects that create collaboration within and across organizational systems in support of an inclusive educational and work environment.