Date:
02/12/2020
Six MSI PIs are among the ten faculty members who have been named as the 2020-22 McKnight Land-Grant Professors. Recipients hold the designation “McKnight Land-Grant Professor” for two years, and receive $25,000 each year to support their research/scholarly work. The goal of the program is to advance the careers of assistant professors at a crucial point in their professional lives.
The MSI PIs who have been honored with this award are:
- Lindsay Glesener (School of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science and Engineering, Twin Cities)
- Professor Glesener uses MSI for EXACT/IMPRESSS, a CubeSat project being designed and built by a team of undergraduate and graduate student. The supercomputers are used for simulations of the CubeSat and its environment.
- Branden Moriarty (Pediatrics, Medical School, Twin Cities)
- Professor Moriarity uses genetics and genomics resources available through MSI for studies of pediatric cancers. Some of this research was featured on the MSI website in May 2019: A Tool to Identify Cancer Genes.
- Anthony Schroeder (Math, Science and Technology, Crookston)
- Professor Schoeder uses MSI for two project areas: using high-throughput sequencing technology to identify new microbes and their secondary metabolites to find bioactive compounds that can be used for antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals; and using next-generation sequencing to study and understand the molecular mechanisms underlying sexual differentiation.
- Andrew D. Wickert (Earth and Environmental Sciences, College of Science and Engineering, Twin Cities)
- Professor Wickert’s projects using MSI seek to understand changes in land and water under both natural and anthropogenic forcings. His group is currently studying changes in ice sheets and the sea level since the last glacial maximum; how river systems aggrade and incise; and the development of effective, inexpensive, and open-source field instrumentation for research.
- Alik S. Widge (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Medical School, Twin Cities)
- Professor Widge uses MSI for computational analysis of extremely large datasets resulting from electrophysiologic studies of decision-making brain networks.
- Sylia Wilson (Institute of Child Development, College of Education and Human Development, Twin Cities)
- Professor Wilson uses MSI to support studies of twins and families to determine the risks for and consequences of psychopathology and the brain.
A list of all the recipients and descriptions of their research can be found on the Scholars Walk website.