Purdue University will head a center to develop "advanced life support" technologies for sustaining human colonies on Mars and elsewhere in space. Purdue received a $10 million, five-year grant to lead the NASA Specialized Center of Research and Training for Advanced Life Support. The center will include 24 researchers from Purdue and two historically black universities, Alabama A&M in Normal, Ala., and Howard in Washington, D.C.

A group of faculty across departments within the School of Agriculture who carry out research and technology outreach programs focused on the introduction of new and unique crops and plant products including those appropriate to the fields of horticulture, agronomy, and forestry.

An effort based in our landscape architecture program with emphasis on linkage between classroom projects and community and environmental design. Real world projects are completed by students to the benefit of Indiana communities. Projects have included downtown revitalizations, farmers markets, urban street tree plantings, development of parks and recreational areas, and linkages to natural resources such as rivers and lakes.

An internationally recognized center focused on research and advanced degree training in the area of plant stresses and their impact on crops. Work focuses on environmental stresses such as winter cold, summer heat, drought, and salinity and mechanisms of plant tolerance to these yield-limiting phenomena.

The Agricultural Genome Initiative at Purdue University is a result of a strong commitment from Purdue University Colleges of Agriculture and Science. An NSF grant for equipment and Purdue Research Foundation faculty reinvestment grant provides faculty, post-docs and students access to state of the art equipment for high throughput genomics and large scale sequencing. The newly formed Agricultural Genome Center is housed in Whistler Agricultural Research Building. The mission of the Agricultural genomics facility is the development of sustainable agriculture in the twenty-first century through the application of state of the art genomics technologies including: bioinformatics, high throughput genomics, large scale sequencing and modern statistical methods. The faculty have a wide range of interests, from development of new biochemical and statistical techniques to applications of genomic science in model organisms and crop plants. The center provides and open atmosphere where investigators from agronomy, biochemistry, biology, forestry, horticulture, and statistics can engage in multidisciplinary research.