Our Initiatives (Projects)

Our projects are typically cross-initiative endeavors that incorporate our three focus areas: Microbial Research and Discovery, Education, and Art.

Microbial Education.

Our education initiatives use evidence-based practices to effect change. We build accessible tools that enable improved decision-making and enhance engagement. They are intended to enchant the senses and provoke curiosity.

Microbial Art.

Our art initiatives use creativity to aid the exploration process. They engage new audiences and provoke dialogues on how the fearful can be intimate, how the revolting can be beautiful, and how the abstract can be colorfully tangible.

Microbial Discovery.

Our discovery initiatives create new tools, new strategies, and new research to explore the microbial world and facilitate the development of new microbial applications. This work is motivated not just by a wish to harness this microbial technology as soon as possible, but to harness this power before it disappears forever through microbial conservation.

Example Projects & Activities

MORE COMING SOON

Testimonials

 

“This fall I had to shift my undergrad Field Ecology course online, two weeks into the semester, in response to COVID-19. I quickly developed a series of labs linked to previously published research and/or ongoing citizen science efforts, so that students could practice a variety of field methods and compare data from their local environment to broader contexts. Thank goodness I found the Global Lichen Hunt! Your project page is filled with compelling images and background information to "hook" participants right away; and your additional resources on keeping a field notebook and extending the science of lichens not only enhanced my students' educational experience, but also got them excited about the many possible scientific careers they might pursue after graduation.” 

— Professor Erin McKenney, Department of Applied Ecology, North Carolina State University, 2020

"As a component of the research grant from the National Science Foundation that partly funds my molecular biology lab, I run outreach programs targeting middle school students to cultivate engagement with science in general and microbiology specifically. These typically involve isolating wild yeast from the bark of trees. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut schools in the Spring of 2020, all these activities were canceled. Also canceled was an annual retreat for families with profoundly gifted children that I regularly attend. I recognized the explosion in home sourdough activity, found the Wild Sourdough Project, contacted members of the Microbe Institute, and with their help was able to put together within weeks a series of activities that allowed families to safely isolate yeast from their sourdough starters in their own kitchens and mail them to me for analysis. The project worked beautifully and will likely be the basis of my outreach programs in the near future.”

-Associate Professor Michael McMurray, Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, 2020