Dr. Sara Branco Is Awarded $1.1M Educational Grant

Published: May 4, 2023

Dr. Sara Branco

 

 

Dr. Sara Branco is awarded a $1,169,284 Department of Energy, Joint Genome Institute (JGI) Director’s Science Program grant entitled ‘Myco-Ed: Mycological Curriculum for Education and Discovery’. This multi-institution effort lead by the JGI and involving the Arizona Genomics Institute, CU Denver, CU Boulder, Colorado State University, Oregon State University, Denver Botanic Gardens, University Wyoming, and Duke University will support a new training program in fungal biology for undergraduate students. The program consists of coordinated hands-on experiments across fungal biology courses offered through different higher education institutions that will train students in laboratory techniques and data analyzes, as well as compile original data for improving fungal genomics resources. This effort will be implemented in the new Fungal Biology class Dr. Branco will offer in Fall 2023 (4050-03/5050-03 Advanced Topics in Biology) and the team will develop a publicly available module to be implemented by any fungal biology class across the country. The overall goal is to reach a broad audience by scaling up the program and cover a wide range of geographic and student/fungal diversity.