www.huck.psu.edu/institutes-and-centers/microbiome-center" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">One Health Microbiome Center at University Park. With over 540 members, 125 faculty and 160 graduate students from 42 departments across 10 colleges at Penn State, the center is one of the crown jewels of interdisciplinary excellence in our research enterprise. I had the chance to learn about the center's innovative research from some of our amazing faculty members and students.
It was an exciting day at the center because the day before my visit, we received word that the One Health Microbiome Center won the WH Pierce Global Impact in Microbiology Prize from Applied Microbiology International. It's the first time in the award's 30-year history that the prize has been bestowed on a collaborative rather than an individual researcher.
You may think of the microbiome as the community of microorganisms that live in your gut. Or you might think of the bacteria and viruses that cause disease. But as I learned from Seth Bordenstein, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck endowed chair in microbiome sciences in the Eberly College of Science and director of the One Health Microbiome Center, microbes are everywhere around us. Not only do they inhabit our bodies, but they teem in environments spanning plants, animals, soils, and oceans, and even our foods and homes. On my visit, I even got to see samples of microbes on our campus, from the fall foliage to the Nittany Lion mascot!
