UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State One Health Microbiome Center has been selected as the winner of the 2024 WH Pierce Global Impact in Microbiology Prize by Applied Microbiology International.
This prize “acknowledges and celebrates individuals, teams, or organizations that have made groundbreaking contributions to global challenges through applied microbiology.” As part of the decision-making process, the award also encompasses a broad spectrum of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, illustrating the versatile and wide-ranging impact of microbiology in various global contexts.
The prize is part of the Applied Microbiology International Horizon Awards, which “celebrate the brightest minds in the field and promote the research, groups, projects, products, and individuals who continue to help shape the future of applied microbiology.”
“We are so delighted to be able to present this well-deserved award to the One Health Microbiome Center, in recognition of all the groundbreaking work that they have carried out to address global challenges using microbiology,” said Lucy Harper, chief executive of Applied Microbiology International.
Part of the Penn State Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences, the One Health Microbiome Center connects researchers, educators, and artists from across the University who study microbiomes—or communities of microorganisms, such as bacteria, fungi, viruses, archaea, and protozoa—that inhabit an environment. Established in 2016, the center is one of the largest and most active units in the field, with a mission to “optimize, advance, and disseminate long-lasting microbiome applications and knowledge.”
The center also has the first microbiome sciences doctoral program, the largest bacteria repository in the E. coli Reference Center, a leading industry-academic partnership with multinational scientific technology supplier QIAGEN, and a top science-education series—Discover the Microbes Within! The Wolbachia Project—that connects with 18 minority-serving institutions and hundreds of K-12 educators and classroom across the globe.
It is a founding member of the national Microbiome Centers Consortium and the International Holobiont Biology Network. It was renamed as the world’s first One Health-themed microbiome center in the spring of 2023 to recognize its broad impacts on the microbiome sciences, with over 550 members, including 125 faculty and 160 graduate students from 42 departments across Penn State.
“The 2024 WH Pierce Global Impact in Microbiology Prize is the first to recognize the body of scholarship by a center rather than an individual or two,” said Seth R. Bordenstein, director of the One Health Microbiome Center, Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Microbiome Sciences, and professor of biology in the Penn State Eberly College of Science.
The center was founded under the inaugural directorship of Carolee Bull, professor of bacterial systematics and plant pathology, who served from 2016 to 2022 and oversaw the extensive growth of microbiome scholars as well as the creation of its executive committee, which presently is composed of faculty from 13 departments, including arts and architecture, anthropology, biomedical sciences, and plant sciences, among many others.
Bordenstein, who has studied host-microbe-virus symbioses for three decades, began his tenure in 2022 as the center’s second director and orchestrated an expansion of the center’s reputation, partnerships, and resources to serve state, national, and international communities. His research specialties span the utility of microbes to control mosquito-borne diseases, the details of microbiome diversity across the diversity of humans, and the major trends of host-associated microbiomes across the animal kingdom.
“The center deeply values this attribution and recognizes that an awarded organization turns the page on prize culture that too narrowly rewards individuals who overshadow the collaborative nature of scientific progress,” Bordenstein said. “It is time to recognize the contributions of a wider range of scientists, educators, and artists — the teams that truly fuel the growth of microbiome sciences and applied microbiology over the last two decades — leading global impact at large and multidimensional scales.”
About Applied Microbiology International
Applied Microbiology International is the oldest microbiology society in the United Kingdom and, with more than half of its membership outside the U.K., serves microbiologists based in universities, private industry, and research institutes around the world.
More information about Applied Microbiology International’s grants and awards is available on its website.