The Year 2022:
Zhang lab (Jiwei Zhang, Weiran Li, and Charles Ayers) took the 2022 ASM Microbe annual meeting from June 9 - to June 13 in Washington DC and presented the fungal phenotyping work (by DOE award) and the MnDRIVE PFAS mycoremediation research.
Zhang lab received $310K 2022 BARD RESEARCH GRANTS this June to study fungal interaction and use it for converting agri-residues. This is a collaboration with Hadar, Y. and Yarden, O. at the Hebrew U, and the project will officially start on Dec. 1, 2022 and through Nov. 30, 2025.
Minnesota Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund (LCCMR) approved a $189K award to Zhang lab to support the research on developing the fungal-wood chips filtering system for PFAS remediation. The project will be from July 1, 2022 through June 30, 2024.
April 2022, Paper up!
Zhang lab presented the brown rot genetics research at the 31st Fungal Genetic Conference at Pacific Grove, CA from March 15 to March 20.
The Year 2021:
Zhang lab received $1.4M DOE awards in the 2021 summer for "large-scale phenotyping" in the mission-relevant lignocellulose-degrading fungi - brown rot fungi. This project is a collaboration among UMN, UW, PNNL, and JGI, lasting from Sep. 1st, 2021 to Aug. 31th, 2024.
Zhang lab got the MnDRIVE Spring 2021 Postdoc Seed Grant Awards to work on "Biological Remediation of Adhesives" with Steve Severtson's group (leading PI) at the Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering. Jesus David Castaño will be supported by this grant for his postdoctoral research.
Zhang lab will lead the MnDRIVE Spring 2021 Graduate Seed Grant Awards to work on "Using Fungus to Remediate Forever Chemicals". This is a collaboration with Cara Santelli and Jerry Cohen groups at UMN, and with SKB Environmental, Wenck-Stantec as the industrial partners. Graduate student Charles Ayers from Zhang lab will be supported by this grant.
Welcome postdoc Jesus David Castaño, graduate student Charles Ayers, UROP researcher Sam Nguyen, and lab manager Lucas Heffernan join to Zhang lab this fall!