Dr. TJ Sullivan, who is the Assistant Professor of Molecular Ecology in the Department of Science, Mathematics, and Informatics here at Indiana University Kokomo, has won a $173,000 grant from the National Science Foundation.

Professor Sullivan and his colleague from Hope College of Holland, Michigan, Dr. Tom Bultman, will study the relationship between toxic and non-toxic grasses that livestock eat, which the money from the grant will go toward. The grant he received was one of 11,500 grants given, out of 45,000 requests that the National Science Foundation received.

In order to apply for the grant, Dr. Sullivan and Dr. Bultman had to write a proposal describing what they wanted to do and provide justification that the experiments would be important to science. They then had to create a budget and describe how much money was being requested. All of that information was then submitted to be reviewed by other scientists.

When asked how he felt when he received the news, Dr. Sullivan stated, “I was really excited and happy when I got the news. It was a great reassurance not only that my proposed research actually was a good idea, but also that I’d be able to financially support it for the next few years.” However, this is not the first grant that Dr. Sullivan has received. He received smaller grants when he was a graduate student, as well as here at Indiana University Kokomo, but this grant is the largest.

He has been studying the relationship between fungi and grasses since graduate school. Says Sullivan, “When I was initially looking into going to graduate school, I knew I wanted to study ecology, specifically symbiotic relationships involving microorganisms, like bacteria and fungi, and larger organisms, like plants and animals. While I was visiting graduate schools, I visited Arizona State, where I met with Dr. Stan Faeth, who was working with these fungi already. I became fascinated by this grass/fungal interaction, and ended up going to ASU to get my Ph.D.”

The project has already been started. Dr. Sullivan started collecting seeds from natural populations of Canada Wild Rye from all over the United States. He says that “since that can only be done in August when the plants are producing seeds, I did some collecting because I wanted to be able to start right away and not have to wait until next summer if the grant was funded.”

When asked how he thought this will affect Indiana University Kokomo research projects for this department in the future, Dr. Sullivan replied that “faculty in SMI and at IU Kokomo in general are all active researchers, all doing interesting things. Hopefully this news will help shine a light on everything else faculty are doing here, and help people realize that important research doesn’t have to be done at a large campus. We can do it here, too.”

Amanda Chesshir