News & Events

Patrick Hrdlicka of the Department of Chemistry and Madhu Papasani and Rod Hill of the Department of Animal and Veterinary Science have won a $523,000 National Institutes of Health grant to explore new approaches to gene therapies by using locked nucleic acids or LNAs as invaders to target specific sections of chromosomes.  The grant is the first one awarded to Idaho researchers through the Exceptional, Unconventional Research Enabling Knowledge Acceleration (EUREKA) program.  Read the press release.

Eric Brauns of the Department of Chemistry has won a $710,000 National Science Foundation equipment grant to build an ultrafast infrared spectrometer, which will be capable of probing the most fundamental characteristics of molecules.  Read the press release.

Erica Bree Rosenblum of the Department of Biological Sciences has published the results of a study on the chytrid fungus known as Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) and its impact on frog populations.  Read the press release.

Harley Johansen of the Department of Geography secured a two year, $174,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study the economic impacts of climate change in communities in northern Scandinavia and northwestern Russia.  Read the press release.

Utilizing funds received from a National Institutes of Health Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) grant, the University of Idaho has acquired a $600,000 GS FLX Titanium Series pyrosequencing machine, which is capable of sequencing the human genome in a matter of weeks.  Read the press release.

Luke Harmon of the Department of Biological Sciences has published a paper on his analysis of the evolution of the 60,000 species of jawed vertebrates using genetic data.  Read the press release.

Larry Forney of the Department of Biological Sciences and Zaid Abdo of the Departments of Mathematics and Statistics and colleagues have won a four-year, $10.5 million grant from the National Institutes for Health to study the health impacts of bacterial communities in the human body.  Read the press release.

In June, the University of Idaho hosted Evolution 2009, the annual joint meeting of the three major societies in evolutionary biology: the Society for the Study of Evolution, the Society of Systematic Biologists and the American Society of Naturalists.  More than 1,100 scientists were in attendance.  Olle Pellmyr of the Department of Biological Sciences served as the program chair.  Read the press release.