For decades, American farmers have been unable to keep up with the demand for organic products. This has forced billions of dollars to be spent on foreign organic imports instead of domestic ones — stymying nationwide goals of improving soil health and decreasing reliance on harmful synthetic pesticides. Arizona State University’s Swette Center for Sustainable Food Systems is working to reverse this trend with the launch of a new organic mentorship program called Kernel. By equipping farmers, ranchers and handlers with the support they need to meaningfully transition their operations to organic, the project aims to drive some of the $5.7 billion routed to organic food imports as of 2024 back into U.S. pockets.

University of Tennessee, Knoxville Assistant Professor Nasir Eisty has received support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to advance reliable research software. His project will examine how artificial intelligence can create and test scientific code while ensuring the resulting tools remain dependable, transparent and scientifically relevant for researchers.

Among the central goals in experimental quantum and materials sciences is  to witness, study and eventually control interactions between atomic and subatomic particles. Though rapid and fleeting, these behaviors at such tiny scales underlie some of our most cutting-edge technology in various fields, including semiconductor research and quantum computing.

Manufacturing modern medicines is a multi-stage process, and each step introduces the opportunity for contamination, which can be both deadly and expensive. Penn State chemical engineering doctoral candidate Shreya Kapila is working to improve the sterilization process by surface-modifying the membranes used to sterile filter pharmaceutical products and remove bioburden. She conducts research in the laboratory of Andrew Zydney, Bayard D. Kunkle Chair and professor of chemical engineering at Penn State.

One of 21 researchers selected nationwide for the 2026 cohort, Fullerton will receive $1.35 million over five years with additional funding available for specialized equipment. 

How do bacteria adapt when resources run low? ISTA researchers have found that, under starvation stress, E. coli can use bacteriophages and CRISPR-Cas immunity to transfer and incorporate DNA, accelerating genetic reshuffling. The process resembles a primitive form of sexual reproduction and may help bacterial populations adapt to changing conditions. The findings were published in Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Researchers at University College London have developed a new computational model of human color vision that accounts for individual physiological differences, explaining why wide-gamut modern displays often appear inconsistent to different viewers. Published in Optics Express, the study demonstrates how adjusting a display's red, green, and blue primary light spectra can help manufacturers build screens that deliver more consistent, accurate colors across a broader audience.