Purdue OIGP

08/24/2026

Welcome back, Boilermakers! Whether you're returning or joining us for the first time, we're proud to have you as part of Purdue’s vibrant community. This year brings new opportunities to learn, lead, and support one another as we continue our tradition of excellence in graduate education.

Here’s to a great semester ahead — Boiler Up! 💛🖤

08/17/2026

Extended space travel and stays on the moon will require humans to produce food, materials, and medicine in space. ESE faculty member, Marshall Porterfield, believes fungi could be grown in space to recycle the waste of astronauts into valuable resources.

More: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2026/08/mushrooms-in-space-purdue-researchers-invent-mycoponics-to-cultivate-fungi-for-earth-the-moon-and-beyond.html

08/14/2026

Majid Kazemian, a CIGP and PULSe faculty member, has been named a 2026 University Faculty Scholar in recognition of his research on gene regulation in virus-associated cancers, autoimmune disorders and infectious diseases.

Read more: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2026/08/majid-kazemian-named-2026-university-faculty-scholar-for-research-in-genomics-and-molecular-immunology.html

08/05/2026

08/05/2026

Ecological Sciences and Engineering (ESE) student, Sarah Grimes, researches how sustainable management practices at vineyards can increase biodiversity, reduce negative impacts of farm operations, and create more efficient management for operators.

“I really enjoyed the liberal arts program at Hope College and hoped to earn my PhD at an institution that offered interdisciplinary programs, which was what first drew me to the Ecological Sciences and Engineering program at Purdue,” Grimes shared. “I wanted to meet and collaborate with people outside my discipline. My undergraduate research was on avian vocalizations, so I connected with Dr. Bryan Pijanowski to inquire about his soundscape ecology work.”

More: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/department/fnr/2026/07/grimes-researching-vineyard-sustanability-biodiversity.html

08/04/2026

08/03/2026

Three Ecological Sciences and Engineering (ESE) Students, Adebola Adeniji, Sarah Grimes, and Mingyu Zhao, received the MSU-NASA Professional Enhancement Award at the International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America conference. The NASA-MSU Professional Enhancement Awards are made possible by support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Michigan State University (MSU). The program has supported approximately 480 students and other junior scholars from approximately 200 institutions worldwide since 1998 to present their research and interact with leading scientists and other attendees at international meetings.

More: https://www.canr.msu.edu/csis/education/nasa_msu_award/2026

07/31/2026

For thousands of years, cotton has been used in textiles, but how a single cotton fiber grows has remained largely unknown. Purdue researchers are helping solve that mystery.

PULSe faculty member, Daniel Szymanski, and a multidisciplinary team across different universities used a multiomics approach to map the molecular networks behind cotton fiber development and created the Cotton Fiber Omics Atlas, a new resource to advance crop improvement and plant biotechnology.

More: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/2026/07/mapping-the-development-of-cotton-fibers-through-multiomics-profiling.html

07/30/2026

Several Ecological Sciences and Engineering (ESE) students in the Forestry and Natural Resources department, have been recognized for their scholarship, research and outreach this spring and summer.

- Nathan Shoaf | Future Leaders Forum (FLF) Fellow by the Association for International Agriculture and Rural Development (AIARD)
- Adebola Adeniji | MSU-NASA Professional Enhancement Award at the International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America conference
- Sarah Grimes | MSU-NASA Professional Enhancement Award at the International Association for Landscape Ecology-North America conference

More: https://ag.purdue.edu/news/department/fnr/2026/07/fnr-celebrates-spring-summer-awards.html

07/29/2026

Cancer therapies that harness the immune system are already saving lives, but developing new immunotherapies requires a deeper understanding of how cancer evades immune defenses.

At the core of cancer’s most pernicious powers — evading the immune system, resisting conventional therapies, spreading through metastasis — are subtle changes to the genetic machinery of cells. Understanding these molecular mechanisms is the domain of Purdue University researcher and PULSe faculty member Emily Dykhuizen.

More: https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/2026/Q1/exploring-the-machinery-that-surrounds-dna-to-stop-cancer/