Success Stories

The University of Maine and University of of New England will be included in a program to advance research in quality control of biomanufacturing and biotechnology.

The universities will be supported by the Department of Energy’s EPSCoR as part of the project.

Hidden in the soil of backyards around the world, yet-to-be-discovered enzymes could be holding the key to improved gene therapies that could cure the most debilitating diseases plaguing modern society.

Thanks to the University of Delaware College of Engineering’s Kevin Solomon, it may be an undergraduate student who discovers the enzyme (or enzymes) that changes the world. But their search is just one part of a broad effort to pursue a new avenue for improving modern-day biomolecular engineering tools.

Solomon, a synthetic biology expert and assistant professor in UD’s Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, was recently awarded about $1.1 million in funding for this work from the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program, one of the most prestigious awards a junior faculty member can receive.

Solomon is one of Delaware INBRE's new Pilot Project Investigators.

An international team of investigators, including several researchers in biological sciences from the University of Arkansas, have published a paper that reports the discovery of a developmental gene linked to touch in the tentacles of sea anemones as well as hearing in humans. The gene, called pou-iv (pronounced “pow four”), is important for the development of auditory cells in the human inner ear.

The U of A researchers are affiliated with Nagayasu Nakanishi, a recent recipient of a $1.15M NSF CAREER award for his work on the evolution of the nervous system. He is the corresponding author on the study.

University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers are part of a new $6M NSF EPSCoR Track-2 grant to develop bioplastics for use in agriculture over the next four years.

The project includes a consortium of 15 researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Kansas State University and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. The researchers asked each other what they could do that was truly novel. Their answer was “Bioplastics with Regenerative Agricultural Properties,” or BioWRAP. The project aims to reduce the use of plastics, herbicides, fertilizers and associated environmental impacts in agricultural production by creating an all-in-one bioplastic system that can better manage weeds, add nutrients to soils, improve soil and plant health, and save water.

The project is funded through NSF’s Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research Research Infrastructure Improvement Program Track 2. Successful projects involve a consortium of three or more EPSCoR jurisdictions (states) and may receive up to $1.5 million per year for up to four years.

Soybean is one of the top cash crops grown in South Carolina, but high temperatures during the growing season limit yields and cut into profits.

Two Clemson University researchers believe a better understanding of traits associated with heat tolerance in soybean can help in developing heat-tolerant varieties that can lead to more sustainable crop production. They have received a $649,895 grant from the USDA NIFA to study soybean’s efficiency for heat tolerance. This grant continues research in which the researchers are examining traits that lead to heat tolerance in soybean.

The project aims to generate information on lipid metabolic changes, physiological mechanisms and their genetic controls that confer heat tolerance in soybean. During the project researchers will evaluate contemporary high-value soybean varieties with high seed oleic acid content and drought tolerance. The data generated will provide producers with information on the heat tolerance of these varieties.

A University of Nebraska-Lincoln research team has been awarded a $742,000 USDA NIFA grant to establish the Research and Extension Experiences for Undergrads program.

The five-year “Crop-to-Food Innovation” program will give students 10-week summer research experiences and scientific communication and leadership training. The project will create opportunities for students to work with scientists who develop new crop traits and apply innovative bioprocessing and formulation technologies to evaluate and develop new food and feed applications.

Alaska NSF EPSCoR and University of Alaska-Fairbanks researchers Phylicia Cicilio and Ben Gaglioti were recently awarded NSF EPSCoR Track-4 awards. Cicilio was awarded $176,688 for her project; Gaglioti was award $112,967 for his project.

Vermont EPSCoR Basin Resilience to Extreme Events (BREE) researcher and Vermont State Climatologist Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux, PhD will be honored with a lifetime achievement award at the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (AAG) in February 2022.

The award comes after a unanimous decision by the AAG's Climate Specialty Group, which chose to honor Dr. Dupigny-Giroux for her many achievements in climate science. This body of work includes 25 years as Vermont's State Climatologist and over 40 peer-reviewed publications in the fields that include climate variability and change, severe weather hazards, drought, and remote sensing.

SC Translational Research Improving Musculoskeletal Health (SC TRIMH, COBRE located at Clemson University) Director Dr. Hai Yao and his collaborator at NIH Dr. Janice Lee, received an NIH U-01 $3.18M three-year grant for their project entitled, “ATTRACT: Assessment of Temporomandibular Joint Morphology, Mechanics, and Mechano-biology in Class II and III Target and Surgical Phenotypes.”

Alaska can’t offer much in the way of sagebrush or pygmy rabbits. What it does have is burgeoning capacity to study microbes, which is why a consortium of Western EPSCoR states is partnering with the University of Alaska-Fairbanks on a study of how the gut bacteria of desert animals enable them to digest toxic plants. Mario Muscarella, an Assistant Professor of Microbiology at UAF is the newest partner in “Genomics Underlying Toxin Tolerance (GUTT),” an NSF EPSCoR Track-2 project with the goal of better understanding the relationship between toxic plants and herbivores. Campuses in Idaho, Nevada and Wyoming have been collaborating on the $7M project.

The sprawling GUTT project tackles plant-animal interactions from a number of different angles – an approach the research team calls “culture-omics” — and now involves researchers from six different campuses. Muscarella said he got involved in the project last year when project lead Jennifer Forbey of Boise State approached him about injecting his own techniques, which entail culturing gut microbes and studying them through the lenses of physiology and genomics.