ITTA BENA, Miss. — Mississippi Valley State University is the recent recipient of a $33,200 grant that will be used to enhance research performed by the institution’s Bioinformatics and Environmental Health programs.
Awarded by the Mississippi IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence ( MS INBRE), the grant will help support curriculum development as well as provide equipment used for research, education and training.
More specifically, the funds will be used to enhance experiential training for two courses, "Genomes and Genomic Technologies" in the Bioinformatics program and "Environmental Microbiology" in the Environmental Health program.
The MS INBRE award will also support two graduate student scholarships during the spring 2018 semester.
Dr. Mark Dugo, assistant professor of Environmental Health, said the funds will help the departments prepare students to perform research on the next level.
"This grant will allow us to dive deeper into experiential training," said Dugo. This will make our students ready for work and for continuing their Ph.D. studies in research. We're trying to enhance our students with hands-on experience. We are excited about it."
Dugo said the grant will support the longstanding genomic research and student training by MVSU Director of Bioinformatics Dr. Abigail Newsome. The research involves exposing cultures of bacteria and algae to nanoparticles to assess the nanotoxicity and genomic modulations of exposure.
“The production of engineered nanoparticles (NPs) has steadily increased over the past several decades. Applications range from skin creams to drug delivery, to agents of bioremediation,” Dugo explained. “While NPs and nanotechnology hold great promise for a variety of applications, there remains a significant question as to the impacts of accumulating of nanoparticles in the environment.”
Mississippi INBRE is a network of colleges and universities, designed to build a biomedical research infrastructure in Mississippi.
Curriculum development grants provided by INBRE are designed to support course creation or enhancement as well as workshops at undergraduate institutions in all areas of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education.
For questions or more information about MVSU’s Bioinformatics or Environmental Health programs, contact the Department of Natural Sciences and Environmental Health at (662) 254-3377.