Dr. Kooyers and Dr. Sigel awarded NSF grant

Dr. Nic Kooyers and Dr. Erin Sigel,have been awarded a major NSF grant.  The University of Louisiana is lead on the project entitled, Consortium for Plant Invasion Genomics (CPING): Combining Big Data and Plant Collections to Understand Invasiveness.  Other PIs are located at South Dakota State, West Virginia University, and the University of Alabama.
The total award is $3,835,497, with $2,039,766 supporting activities here. This work examines the evolution of invasiveness for five focal invasive plants by leveraging herbarium specimens to recreate a time-series of each invasion and incorporating genomics to investigate the roles of colonization history, admixture and adaptation in becoming invasive. There also is an outreach component involving the implementing genomics bootcamps at each university to provide professors at regional and local universities training in new genomic and bioinformatic techniques