David Haak awarded grant from the Jeffress Memorial Trust
June 1, 2017
David Haak, Assistant Professor of Plant Genomics in the Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology, and Weed Science (PPWS), and a Global Change Center Affiliate, recently received a grant from the Thomas F. and Kate Miller Jeffress Memorial Trust, which provides $100,000 awards to conduct innovative interdisciplinary pilot studies in fields such as biosciences, chemistry, engineering, and environmental sciences. The Co-Principal Investigator on the grant is Dr. Xiaofeng Wang, PPWS.
The project is entitled, “Do RNA Viruses Hijack Alternative Splicing Machinery for Infections? A Bioinformatician’s View”. According to Dr. Haak, “In short, we are trying to determine how host cell machinery is reprogrammed by viral particles to promote infection without host detection.”
One of the goals of the project is to promote undergraduate training. During the project period, the Co-PI’s will be ‘cross-training’ 4 undergraduate students in both genomics/bioinformatics and molecular biology.
