The Bennetzen lab at the University of Georgia in Athens has a small (5 digit) amount of funding remaining from its endowment each year, and is interested in using these funds to support collaborations with medium-scale research projects from small colleges and universities in the ASB region. These projects can be in any area of plant genetics (including systematics, population genetics, and conservation genetics) or plant-related microbiology (e.g., soil microbiomics or pathogen variation) that involve DNA or RNA sequence analysis at a medium OMICs scale (dozens to hundreds, but not thousands, of samples). The goal will be to publish this work, with the proposal submitter(s) as the senior author(s).

See FUNDING to access this opportunity. In brief, any interested faculty member from a small college or university in the Southeast (Texas to Florida, and as far north as Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Virginia) would need to submit a two-page proposal with the general details of a one-year project (goals, background, sample types/numbers/availability, and analyses requested) plus a two page cv. It is not a disqualifier if the proposal submitter is not certain which analyses would be most appropriate, in that this would be determined in conversations between the successful proposal submitter and the Bennetzen lab. The key points are the project’s importance, feasibility, timeframe and scale. Details are at http://bennetzenlab.genetics.uga.edu/guidelines.pdf . The deadline for these proposals is 19 May 2025 and submitters will be informed of the funding decision by 29 May. We expect that 1 to 3 proposals will be funded in this first year. The selected participants will be given the opportunity, but not the obligation, to be mentored/trained in a short visit to the Bennetzen lab at UGA at a mutually convenient time in the fall of 2025, but any collaboration will involve a good deal of online cross-mentoring regardless.

We encourage you to investigate this possibility. So much excellent science is being overlooked at small research institutions in the US, because federal and other agencies tend to emphasize mega projects, so this novel funding idea is a step toward decreasing this problem. Dr. Bennetzen will be at the annual ASB meeting this year in Myrtle Beach, so be sure to talk with him if you have any questions.