UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The One Health Microbiome Center (OHMC) of the Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences at Penn State has selected six candidates to receive the 2025 Interdisciplinary Innovation Fellowship (IIF), a competitive funding opportunity designed to empower trainee-led projects that blend disciplines in novel and impactful ways. This year, the six recipients were awarded up to $5,000 to support collaborative work that pushes the boundaries of traditional academic silos through acquisition of new skills, tools or approaches.
The award was created in 2022 with the goal of enhancing interdisciplinary expertise and training beyond the recipient’s primary research area, through short-term experiences in a lab at Penn State or with a collaborator at another university. Upon completion of the fellowship, award recipients are expected to return to their lab at Penn State to disseminate their new expertise throughout the center membership. Each fellow is also expected to deliver a public seminar to share what they have learned with the broader community.
“The One Health Microbiome Center is relentlessly committed to cross-disciplinary excellence and biotechnology in pursuit of our scholarship mission,” said Seth Bordenstein, director of the One Health Microbiome Center, Huck Professor in Microbiome Sciences, and professor of biology and of entomology. “The Interdisciplinary Innovation Fellows powerfully underscore the ways that research can benefit the wider ecosystem of science by bringing together teams and experiences through rigorous inquiry and methodological advancements that are especially crucial during these unprecedented times.”
Four of this year’s fellows will travel to China, Germany, Arizona and Utah, respectively, to train with collaborators. Two of the 2025 fellows will train with OHMC-affiliated faculty outside of their thesis research laboratories at Penn State.
Spanning six departments, four colleges and research areas from food science to soil chemistry, the fellows and their projects represent the breadth of research at the OHMC, Bordenstein said. The six 2025-26 awardees and their winning proposals are:
- “RB-TnSeq-Guided Discovery of Salmonella Genes Critical for Growth in Hydroponic Farming” — Auja Bywater, doctoral student in food sciences advised by Jasna Kovac, associate professor of food science
- “Investigating potential evolutionary signals within the oral microbiome” — Christine Ta, doctoral candidate in anthropology and microbiome science advised by Laura Weyrich, associate professor of anthropology and bioethics
- “Effect of Dietary Fiber-Mediated Alterations of Intestinal Bile Acid Pool on Mucosal Healing” — Sangshan "Sunshine" Tian, doctoral candidate in nutritional sciences advised by Vishal Singh, associate professor of nutritional physiology and microbiome
- “Exploring the role of the mucus microbiome in slug-plant interactions” — Shannon Ryan, doctoral student in ecology advised by John Tooker, professor of entomology
- “Toward Elucidation of Immunoglobulin A (IgA) - Microbe Interactions in the Small Intestine” — Pablo Ochoa-Andersen, research technician in the laboratory of Jessica Grembi, assistant professor of pharmacology
- “Multi-Omics Integration to Decode Microbial Drivers of Carbon Cycling in Tropical Andean Peatlands” — Daniela Betancurt Anzola, doctoral candidate in biochemistry, microbiology and molecular biology advised by Estelle Couradeau, assistant professor of soils and environmental microbiology
Past fellows attribute success in their research to the opportunities provided by the fellowship, according to 2024-25 awardee Ryan Trexler, doctoral candidate in ecology and biogeochemistry, co-advised by Couradeau and Jason Kaye, distinguished professor of soil biogeochemistry.
“Receiving the OHMC IIF award has been transformative for my graduate research and my professional development,” Trexler said. “The funding has enabled me to collaborate with pioneers in the microbiome sciences. … I have been empowered through this award to share these tools and expertise with my colleagues at Penn State, where I hope to pass on this knowledge for others to use in their research.”
The Interdisciplinary Innovation Fellowships are awarded annually each summer and are open to active members of the Penn State One Health Microbiome Center. Trainees, faculty and staff are encouraged to apply, and partnerships to further support these transformative research endeavors are welcome. For more information, please contact Grace Deitzler at gdeitzler@psu.edu.