Julius, Dr. Jeremy Thompson and Professor Keith Perry of Cornell Plant Sciences were recently awarded a Gates Grand Challenge Exploration Grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
(http://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/GrantsAwarded.aspx?Round=9&Phase=1).
These grants are an extension of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s commitment to the Grand Challenges in Global Health, which was launched in 2003 to accelerate the discovery of new technologies to improve global health. The Cornell team was one of 94 selected by the Gates Foundation from a total of 3,200 applications.
The multi-disciplinary Cornell team will use state of the art RNA structure measurement technology developed in the Lucks lab with expertise in plant viral systems in the Perry Lab to uncover new targets for resistance to plant viruses that ravage some of the world’s most depended-upon crop species including beans, chickpeas and yams. More information on the Gates Grand Challenge Exploration Grants athttp://www.grandchallenges.org/Explorations/Pages/Introduction.aspx.
Lucks Laboratory 