- MSU’s plant scientists are considered among the best in the world. Plant science is interdisciplinary and is a part of many departments. These plant biologists, biochemists, chemists, microbiologists, and other scientists are solving fundamental components of major issues in energy, hunger, malnutrition, and pharmaceuticals.
- MSU physics faculty members were a major part of the international collaboration that discovered a single top quark at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. This discovery was a major breakthrough in understanding matter and energy.
- Three juniors in the College of Natural Science received prestigious Goldwater Scholarships in 2009.
- “Green chemistry” plays a major role in the college. Robert Maleczka and Milton Smith received the 2008 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their work that has provided significant innovations in pollution prevention. Kevin Walker recently discovered a method using natural enzymes to manufacture novel paclitaxels which paves the way for cleaner, more efficient production of the cancer-fighting drug Taxol.
- Three faculty members in the Department of Plant Biology were named fellows of American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) in 2009: Rob Last, John Ohlrogge, and Michael Thomashow. They join Kenneth Keegstra, Thomas Sharkey, and Jan Zeevaart, who were among the inaugural class of ASPB fellows in 2008.
- Dean Della Penna and Robin Buell were named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2008. MSU has 21 faculty members who have been awarded fellows of AAAS.
- Students in the Biomedical Laboratory Diagnostics Student Association have won all six years of the college challenges from Gift of Life Michigan and been recognized by the secretary of state. Each year the students have registered more people for the organ donor registry than any other Michigan college or university.
- In the past year, five junior faculty members in the college received National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development Awards, totaling $2.8 million.
- Xuefei Huang received $525,000 for his work studying carbohydrates and the ability to easily create these complex sugar molecules which then are used for cell recognition.
- Elena Litchman received $530,000 to study how global environmental change is altering communities of tiny algae, or phytoplankton, in lakes around the world and affecting water quality and aquatic ecosystem health.
- Jeff Schenker received $479,000 to study the behavior of waves traveling through different forms of imperfect media.
- Alex Shingleton received a $590,000 award for his work studying the relationship between organ size and body size, called allometry.
- Kevin Walker received a $700,000 award for his work studying plant enzymes that are key to the biosynthesis of chemicals with therapeutic properties.
