Latest News

March 16, 2026

The Penn State community is invited to watch the culmination of the 2025-26 Penn State Three Minute Thesis competition, where 10 graduate students will summarize their research and its impact while competing for monetary prizes of up to $1,000. The event will take place at 3 p.m. March 28 at the Nittany Lion Inn on the University Park campus and also will be livestreamed.

March 16, 2026

When farmers apply poultry litter — chicken manure — to fields as fertilizer, it adds nutrients like phosphorus to the soil that plants need. However, phosphorus can dissolve in water and runoff into streams instead of going into crops, causing water pollution and economic loss for farmers, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. A team led by Penn State researchers recently demonstrated that the use of a novel soil additive might effectively reduce phosphorus runoff.

March 13, 2026

A long-running debate in vaccine design revolves around whether a vaccine should be optimized to prevent the virus from replicating inside an infected host or prevent the virus from transmitting to others. New research led by Penn State scientists suggests there may not have to be a tradeoff.

March 5, 2026

The inaugural Penn State-Ghana Research Partnerships Seed Grant Program has awarded nine projects to fuel global impact, including crop disease surveillance, removing heavy metals from mining wastewater and understanding multimodal traffic streams.

March 4, 2026

The Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences announced a call for 2026-27 Seed Grant Program funding proposals, due by May 1. Huck seed grants foster innovative, interdisciplinary and collaborative life sciences research with the potential to drive scientific breakthroughs and generate new research directions leading to impactful externally funded research.

February 26, 2026

A new teaching guide — created by Penn State College of Agricultural Sciences alumna Sadie Seaman along with the support of her thesis adviser — is making bacterial genome sequencing more accessible for students just getting started in the lab.

February 25, 2026

On Valentine’s Day, the Palmer Museum of Art became a tasting room and a classroom all at once. “The Art of Chocolate: A Guided Tasting Experience,” presented by the Arboretum at Penn State in partnership with Penn State’s Cacao and Chocolate Research Network, paired research with sensory discovery and chocolate with cheese.

February 25, 2026

Penn State and the Pennsylvania Department of Health researchers will continue monitoring household sewage at dozens of municipal plants around the commonwealth for foodborne illness pathogens, with new funding from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The grant, anticipated to amount to more than $500,000 over five years, will complement related work funded by the FDA since 2016.

February 25, 2026

Microbiome — referring to the community of microorganisms inhabiting a specific organism — science may help solve problems facing agriculture, but prior research findings have not yet been translated to practical recommendations for growers, according to a team of scientists in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences that has offered some ways to accelerate the transition.

February 24, 2026

Andrew Patterson, John T. and Paige S. Smith Professor in the College of Agricultural Sciences, has been elected as a fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology.

February 24, 2026

Penn State researchers and their colleagues found that vegetative buffers, like shrubs or grasses, likely reduces the amount of specific pesticides from reaching a stream. However, the buffers are not protective against all pesticides entering waterways.

February 17, 2026

Ran Li, assistant professor of agricultural economics, will discuss the effectiveness of the mobile app Too Good To Go as a potential complement to public food assistance by reallocating surplus food into low-cost consumption opportunities. His talk is scheduled for noon on Wednesday, Feb. 25, in 157 Hosler Building on the Penn State University Park campus.

February 17, 2026

Penn State Extension recently was awarded a competitive national grant to build a microcredentialing system aimed at strengthening the agricultural workforce and formally recognizing job-ready skills.

February 12, 2026

Biting into a tart green apple is a different taste and sensory experience than sucking juice from a lemon. Now, Penn State researchers have found that while some of that sour taste and experience difference comes from individual perceptions, the acids themselves vary in sourness, even at the same concentrations.

February 11, 2026

Paul Esker and John Boney, faculty members in Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences, have received grants from the Pennsylvania Soybean Board. 

February 6, 2026

David Huff, professor of turfgrass breeding and genetics at Penn State, recently earned the Research Innovator Award through the College of Agricultural Sciences for the research and entrepreneurial leadership that led to the founding of his startup, PennPoa. To launch his turfgrass startup, Huff utilized Penn State entrepreneurial resources.

February 5, 2026

Implementing novel management practices in dairy farming, one of the commonwealth’s major agricultural industries, could help alleviate a large source of both nutrient pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, according to a multidisciplinary team led by researchers at Penn State.

February 5, 2026

Ten graduate students have been named finalists for the 2025-26 J. Jeffrey and Ann Marie Fox Graduate School Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, which helps graduate students refine their research communication skills while gaining recognition for their scholarship and competing for cash prizes. The final round of Penn State’s Three Minute Thesis competition will take place on Saturday, March 28, at the Nittany Lion Inn.

February 4, 2026

To better equip organic farmers to control weeds, a team of Penn State agricultural scientists received a four-year, $935,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study how promoting soil microbes to infect and kill weed seeds might reduce problematic weed species.

February 2, 2026

Governments and organizations that provide mental health support to farmers dealing with depression, anxiety and isolation have traditionally focused on overcoming the stigma associated with getting help — but that isn’t the barrier farmers face, according to a new study by a research team led by rural sociologists at Penn State. The bigger issues, they found, are rural health care shortages, long wait times for appointments and travel time, as well as high health care costs.

January 30, 2026

Bayer has expanded it's partnership with Penn State by launching the Bayer Pharmaceuticals 2026 Bayer University Mentoring Program (B4U) for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers pursing careers in related fields. This expanded B4U initiative offers mentorship, professional skills training and nationwide networking to prepare emerging scientists for careers across academia, industry and innovation.

January 30, 2026

Researchers at Penn State recently found, in mice, that a protein critical to intestinal barrier function — helping the gut absorb nutrients while blocking harmful pathogens — is rhythmically controlled by nighttime liver metabolism of the molecule tryptophan.  

January 26, 2026

A team of Penn State food scientists was awarded a two-year, $428,200 grant by the National Institutes of Health to explore whether cow’s milk protein — casein — can help disperse drugs that don’t dissolve well in liquids for oral medications.

January 22, 2026

Domestication has changed the chemicals squash flowers use to attract bees, according to a new study from researchers at Penn State.

January 22, 2026

Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences has awarded bridge funding to four faculty members to support research collaborations addressing soil fertility, public health, climate resilience and agricultural trade.

January 21, 2026

Several Penn State students used their experience in research and storytelling to advocate for federally funded research and take top prizes in the Science Coalition’s 2025 Alyse Gray Parker Memorial Student Video Challenge.

January 16, 2026

Penn State disease ecologist Molly Bletz was awarded a 2025 New Investigator Grant by the Charles E. Kaufman Foundation to study the infectome, a proposed new framework for understanding disease.

January 16, 2026

Jessica Grembi, an assistant professor of pharmacology in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences, has received a $500,000 grant from the Gates Foundation to investigate the role of the microbiome in environmental enteropathy — a condition characterized by inflammation of the small intestine that affects nutrient absorption.