The Biological Sciences Department at SUNY Old Westbury was selected to be part of the 10th cohort of the HHMI Science Education Alliance's Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Sciences (SEA-PHAGES) program beginning in the 2017-2018 academic year.
The program promotes the implementation of discovery-based activities in the undergraduate science curriculum, which aims to increase interest and retention in the sciences through immediate immersion in authentic, valuable, yet accessible research. As part of the College's participation, students registered in the Honors section of freshman biology will undertake a one year research project to isolate and characterize bacteriophages/phages (viruses that infect bacteria) from our local ecosystems.
SEA-PHAGES is jointly administered by Graham Hatfull's group at the University of Pittsburgh and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Science Education division. For more information on this project, please see the following link: https://seaphages.org/.