BI502B - Topics in Plant Pathology, Plant Bacteriology
- The course is designed to present an overview of the broad range of interactions that bacteria have with plants, although the emphasis will be on interactions leading to disease. Particular emphasis will be given to the major groups of plant pathogenic bacteria, the diseases they cause, and how they cause various disease phenotypes. This course builds upon basic concepts provided in an introductory plant pathology course, and assumes a basic knowledge of microbiology. Objectives of this course are: (1) To promote integration of concepts in microbial ecology, physiology, genetics within the context of interactions with plants and (2) To provide current information on plant-bacterial interactions involved in plant diseases.
BI450/550 - Advanced Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions
- Objectives of this course are to study the molecular mechanisms by which plants and pathogens interact during the progress of pathogenesis or resistance. Examples of plant/insect interactions, and how they are similar or different will be integrated. Areas covered will be the physiology, biochemistry, molecular biology, and molecular genetics of these interactions. Current information and hypotheses using different host/pathogen or host/pathogen or pest interactions as examples will be presented. Lectures will be followed by student-led discussions of the experimental approaches used or proposed to advance the hypotheses and contribute to an overall understanding of interactions at the molecular level.
ENGR680 - Bioenergy Technology
- This course has been developed as part of the new NSF-funded Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program in Multidisciplinary Approaches to Sustainable Bioenergy (MASB). The goal of the MASBioEnergy program is “to prepare PhD graduates who are trained as interdisciplinary scientists with full understanding of the technical challenges facing the emerging bioenergy industry”; i.e., to educate PhD students in a way that they have an understanding of the entire spectrum of bioenergy topics and that they incorporate more than one discipline in their PhD research.
- This course facilitates that goal by providing a rigorous survey of biofuels/bioenergy production, including the production of biomass (algae and plants); conversion of that biomass to fuels, chemicals, and energy; characterization of biofuel properties in engines; and environmental assessment of these biofuel/bioenergy production processes. The course is composed of lectures, discussions, and laboratory demonstrations and experiments.
- Both the topics and the student population for this course span many disciplines, and thus it is not possible to identify specific course prerequisites. This means that every student in the course will encounter topics for which they do not have formal educational preparation. We address this issue by (a) providing lists of recommended background articles and books, (b) having students work in teams with representation from different educational backgrounds, and (c) focusing on topics that integrate topics rather than those that require specialized knowledge (since those are normally found in single-discipline courses).
