News

Maxwell Harman shares his insights on his acceptance to the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

A group of graduate and undergraduate students participated in the 2024 EnergyTech University Prize, making it to the regionals portion of the competition. The contest is organized by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Technology Transitions and challenges students to create and present a business plan in the energy sector.

Graduate students Xiaotong Jiang and Bailey Kleven are the 2024 recipients of the Keegstra and Thomashow Travel Awards.

Max Harman, graduate student in the PRL Walker lab, was awarded a 2024 Michigan Soybean Association Scholarship.

Lisa Yun, a graduate student in the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory Ducat lab, has worked at national laboratories and universities since beginning her professional career. When considering an internship, she wanted to experience industry work to better understand the differences between the workload and organization compared to academia. She wanted to work at a startup, more specifically, she wanted to be in a smaller environment with a goal for sustainability.

For a small field like computational biology, joining an international workshop is a once in a lifetime opportunity to learn from, collaborate with and talk to professionals and students from around the world. This is how Duncan Boren of the Vermaas Lab felt when he learned about the CompBioAsia program.

Food security is an important area of study to Walker lab graduate student Luke Gregory. That’s why when he found an internship for Bayer on LinkedIn, he knew it was the one for him. Bayer’s vision “Health for all, hunger for none,” interested Luke.

In plants, the jasmonate signaling pathway helps plants control their defense responses to environmental stresses. Like the human body, plants respond differently to individual threats. Just as people wouldn’t get a fever due to a sprained ankle, plants deal with harmful elements in particular ways. A study from the Howe lab looks at how plants respond to environmental threats in the correct way.

Two PRL graduate students have been accepted to the Plant Biotechnology for Health and Sustainability Graduate Training Program. This two-year program provides training and career opportunities for students who are interested in research areas related to plant biotechnology.

Graduate student Hannah Parks and postdoctoral researcher María Santos Merino have been awarded the 2023 Anton Lang Memorial Awards at a ceremony which took place on Monday, April 24, 2023. This year’s lecture was given by University Distinguished Professor Thomas D. Sharkey from Michigan State University.

The interview is with Joanne Thomson about her role and contributions to the recent NASA experiment provided by the Brandizzi lab.

Abhijnan Chattopadhyay, former graduate student in David Kramer’s lab, is headed to the National Institute of Health (NIH) at North Carolina Research Triangle Park for his postdoctoral fellowship.

Bianca Serda is a second-year graduate student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Molecular Plant Sciences programs here at Michigan State University. "I have learned that there are many resources available to help move my research forward, all I need to do is ask what is available for me and somehow, I find what I need."

Third-year graduate student Bianca Serda from the Sharkey lab attended two scientific conferences this summer: The Gordon Research Conference on Biogenic Hydrocarbons and the Atmosphere in June, and the American Society of Plant Biologists Plant Biology Conference in July.

Now with Ph.D. in hand, former MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory graduate student Yang-Tsung Lin is ready to continue his studies in algae as a postdoctoral researcher in Professor Sabeeha Merchant’s lab at UC Berkeley, beginning in July 2022.

Grad student Philip Engelgau and postdoc Peipei Wang have been awarded the 2022 Anton Lang Memorial Award at a ceremony which took place on Monday, April 25, 2022. This year’s lecture was given by Professor Emeritus Govindjee from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory (PRL) scientists have published a new study that furthers our understanding of how plants make membranes in chloroplasts, the photosynthesis powerhouse.

Evan Angelos and Hainan Zhao were recognized during a ceremony which took place online on Monday, April 19, 2021. The Anton Lang Memorial Fund was established in honor of the founding director of the MSU-DOE Plant Research Laboratory, who passed away in 1996.

The NRT program at Michigan State University, funded by the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship program, trains doctoral students in applying computational data science approaches to solving problems in plant biology.