Featured Stories
Q&A: Tips to protect against ticks
May is Lyme Disease Awareness Month, and Pennsylvania consistently ranks as one of the top states in the nation for reported cases of Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses. However, there are ways to protect people, pets and livestock against ticks and the pathogens they carry, according to Erika Machtinger, associate professor of entomology in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences.
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Dipanjan Pan named Huck director for innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems
Penn State’s Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences has named Dipanjan Pan, Dorothy Foehr Huck & J. Lloyd Huck Chair Professor in Nanomedicine and professor of materials science and engineering and of nuclear engineering, to serve as the Huck’s first director for innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystems.
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Plant genes influence bacterial evolution in legume-bacteria partnership
In a recently published study, Penn State researchers described the complex relationship between plant host genes and rhizobial genes, and how plant genes strongly influence which rhizobial strains plants chose from a diverse mixture.
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News
Jun 04, 2026
Huck seeks grad students for immersive facility assistantships
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences is seeking applicants for four half-time (20-hour) graduate assistantships within Huck Core Facilities during the fall 2026 semester. Graduate assistants will be placed in a single Huck core facility, chosen by the student, for hands-on experience with that facility’s technologies and applications. The assistants will contribute to projects involving the development, optimization, or application of methods and technologies within the selected facility
Jun 01, 2026
Q&A: New text to serve as reference for advances in plant development
Hong Ma, professor of biology and J. Lloyd Huck and Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution at Penn State, is the co-editor of a new book, Regulation of Plant Development, recently published by Springer Nature. The book presents a synthesis of recent advances in plant vegetative growth and diverse aspects of reproductive development; serves as a comprehensive resource for students, postdocs and researchers in plant development; and provides an integrated reference for scientists advancing genetic improvement of crop plants for sustainability, according to Ma and co-editors.
Jun 01, 2026
Q&A: Are plants the key to solving energy and food crises worldwide?
Changing market conditions are increasing the need for cost-effective ways to produce biorenewable chemicals, biofuels and materials that can serve as alternatives to oil-based products. According to Costas Maranas, Robert V. & Gloria H. Waltemeyer Chair and Donald B. Broughton Professor of Chemical Engineering at Penn State, solutions to these problems could come from applying tools used in synthetic biology to plants and their microbial partners across the globe.
News
Jun 04, 2026
Huck seeks grad students for immersive facility assistantships
The Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences is seeking applicants for four half-time (20-hour) graduate assistantships within Huck Core Facilities during the fall 2026 semester. Graduate assistants will be placed in a single Huck core facility, chosen by the student, for hands-on experience with that facility’s technologies and applications. The assistants will contribute to projects involving the development, optimization, or application of methods and technologies within the selected facility
Jun 01, 2026
Q&A: New text to serve as reference for advances in plant development
Hong Ma, professor of biology and J. Lloyd Huck and Dorothy Foehr Huck Chair in Plant Reproductive Development and Evolution at Penn State, is the co-editor of a new book, Regulation of Plant Development, recently published by Springer Nature. The book presents a synthesis of recent advances in plant vegetative growth and diverse aspects of reproductive development; serves as a comprehensive resource for students, postdocs and researchers in plant development; and provides an integrated reference for scientists advancing genetic improvement of crop plants for sustainability, according to Ma and co-editors.
Jun 01, 2026
Q&A: Are plants the key to solving energy and food crises worldwide?
Changing market conditions are increasing the need for cost-effective ways to produce biorenewable chemicals, biofuels and materials that can serve as alternatives to oil-based products. According to Costas Maranas, Robert V. & Gloria H. Waltemeyer Chair and Donald B. Broughton Professor of Chemical Engineering at Penn State, solutions to these problems could come from applying tools used in synthetic biology to plants and their microbial partners across the globe.
Jun 01, 2026
Four researchers win data harmonization competition
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) National Synthesis Center for Emergence in the Molecular and Cellular Sciences (NCEMS) at Penn State has awarded four researchers from across the world for their efforts in building machine learning-based approaches to streamlining publicly available datasets for reuse. The researchers — two individuals and one team of two — won a competition hosted by the center and designed to showcase data harmonization solutions.
Events
Friday Jun
05
Virology@PSU Meeting–June 2026
Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics
Wednesday Jun
10
How and why multicopy genes survive on the human Y chromosome
Center for Medical Genomics
Sunday Jun
14
Premier International Advanced Manufacturing Research Conference
Friday Jul
17