Research
At A Glance
In the past five years:
4 graduate students received NSF Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grants.
2 received Pre-doctoral Fellowships from the American Heart Association.
1 received a Hudson River Foundation Fellowship.
2 received NSF Graduate Research Fellowships.
Active Grants
- 86 from National Institute of Health, worth $13.5 million
- 39 from National Science Foundation worth $4.4 million
Your experience as a faculty member, student, or researcher can be greatly enriched by the research opportunities available at CAS. With total research expenditures of more than $81 million in 2006, this funding commitment creates excellent opportunities for students and faculty, and further strengthens our ranking as one of the leading agricultural colleges in the country.
Graduate students are engaged in leading projects, recognized for their contributions as investigators and make presentations at national conferences. Examples of the collaborative work among graduate students and faculty that are making a real-world impact:
The Changing Role of Pennsylvania Women's Agriculture Network
Penn State rural sociologists Carolyn Sachs (left) and Fern Willits are part of a research team investigating the many roles that women fulfill in farming enterprises of the past, present, and future.
Postdoctoral researcher Amy Trauger is also part of the team. Trauger's research is aimed at understanding the dynamics that encourage women to go into smaller-scale, sustainable agriculture instead of capital-intensive, industrial-type models. Trauger notes that women come to farming with less access to capital than men, so they tend to start smaller-scale, sustainable operations. Read more
Advances in Listeria Prevention:
Food safety experts are seeing an increase in foodborne bacteria such as Listeria monocytogenes in ready-to-eat foods. To help control these foodborne pathogens, Cathy Cutter, associate professor of food science in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, has developed training materials to teach food handlers how to reduce the risk of listeria contamination.
The need is great, according to Cutter. About 76 million illnesses and 5,000 deaths are blamed on foodborne pathogens annually, she says, but all forms of foodborne illness are consistently underreported in this country. Read more
Sweet success in the Cocoa, Chocolate, and Confectionary Group --- Read More
