Furthering biomedical research and education, a $17.8 million grant was awarded to the Vermont Genetics Network, based at the University of Vermont, for all of Vermont’s colleges and universities.
The five-year grant through the National Institutes of Health is the third to be awarded to the Vermont Genetics Network, which serves Castleton, as well as eight other Vermont college’s and universities, and will help ensure the organization can continue to make necessary investments in college lab classes and innovative research efforts while supporting Vermont academic research and education.
Recent Castleton graduate Christopher Villa, ’15, was selected to speak at the grant announcement and shared his experience with the Vermont Genetics Network.
Villa explained that the program funded an undergraduate research project he conducted in the summer of 2013, under the supervision of Castleton Microbiology Professor Preston Garcia. After presenting the results of his project, he was chosen to participate in a research fellowship from the American Society of Microbiology, which is available to only a select few students in the country each year.