News

Bard Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude and Bard Assistant Professor of Biology Robert Todd have received a $34,000 grant from the Glenn W. Bailey Foundation in support of the PLUMM Project, Project-based Learning for Undergraduates in Microbial Mapping, which will provide undergraduate students from both SUNY Dutchess and Bard College with an immersive, collaborative research opportunity.

In this newly grant-funded part of the PLUMM Project, Jude and Todd will conduct an intensive three-week research experience. During three weeks in January, students will have the opportunity for training in STEM laboratory techniques on multiple active research projects from the Todd and Jude Labs, taking place in the state-of-the-art laboratories in the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Center for Science and Computation at Bard College. The overarching goals of PLUMM are to provide a solid scaffolding of laboratory, experimental design, data collection, and analysis skills that would support the successful completion of a STEM degree and enhance the students’ applications for admission into graduate school or other careers in STEM-related fields. PLUMM also builds on the strong relationships Bard College has with SUNY Dutchess to include faculty and students from both institutions working side-by-side in the lab and coauthoring conference proceedings and journal articles. Students will showcase their research projects at an annual symposium and poster session that will be open to the public.

“This opportunity to conduct research with students in this mid-semester experience will allow us to get students fully engaged in all aspects of the research questions and launch them continuation of this work in subsequent semesters,” said Jude. “The collaboration between students at Bard and SUNY Dutchess will also provide rich opportunities to set up long-term interactions and research projects.”

Bard Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude’s research on pigmented microbes has been featured in The Scientist magazine. Jude is a microbiologist who studies microorganisms cultivated from water sources. When she found a sample of violacein in the Hudson River Valley, she started studying its purple pigment in her labs and eventually moved on to dyeing fabrics with it, on her own and then in her biology classes at Bard.

Jude’s bright purple microbial dyes caught the interest of Around the World in 80 Fabrics, an organization which supports the Ain Leuh Women's Cooperative in Morocco. The microbial dyes provide a safer and more sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes. This experience led Jude to collaborate with Hassan Ghazal, Abderrazak Rfaki, and Said Barrijal to locate and process native pigmented plants from Morocco, and they also created a guide to the new pigments for the Womens’ Cooperative. “It was just incredible,” Jude says, “they want to set up this long-term collaboration too, [and there’s an] understanding that keeping microbes native to an area, indigenous to an area, is really the way forward in our field.”

Clara Sousa-Silva, assistant professor of physics at Bard College, appears in the PBS award-winning documentary series NOVA. The episode, “Solar System: Storm Worlds,” focuses on the dramatic forces creating spectacular weather on neighboring planets and moons. “In our solar system, wherever there’s an atmosphere, there’s weather, no matter how different an atmosphere from Earth’s,” said Sousa-Silva. The episode explores the strange and wonderful weather occurring across our solar system, from globe-spanning dust storms, to monsoons of liquid methane, to monstrous storms with lightning bolts ten times more energetic than anything on Earth.