DARPA Insect Allies Proposers' Day: the Men who Stare at...

Post date: Dec 01, 2016 4:11:25 AM

...plants?!? (Catch the reference?)

Dr. Curtis attends DARPA's Biotechnologies Office Insect Allies Proposers Day in Washington D.C. on November 18th, 2016. The goal of Insect Allies is to develop a vector-mediated mofification technology for mature plants to rapidly counter environmental and biological threats to crops. Beyond Dr. Curtis' long history in applied plant biotechnology and relevant consulting (e.g. consulting/collaborations for/with Monsanto, Agracetus, Weyerhauser, DOW Agrosciences, Nunhems), the project nicely ties into a number of CurtisLab projects on transient expression as well as some (yet) unpublished preliminary undergraduate research by Ben Woolston (now finishing PhD at MIT) and Amalie Tuerk (PhD '16, University of Delaware).

Surprisingly, the conference revealed a BAA do in January... one guess how Dr. Curtis will be spending his holiday?