News

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.