Trenton Times: Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton receives $5 million grant from Carnegie Corporation

Understanding the genetic makeup of black tea is a pressing goal for scientists in southern Africa. The graduate students supervised by Zeno Apostolides, a professor of biochemistry at the University of Pretoria, have identified a DNA sequence that is associated with drought tolerance in the plant, and their ongoing research could be applied to produce drought-resistant varieties of other crops in Africa.

Although such work is relevant and promising, it falls outside the priorities of South African government funding, Apostolides said. Graduate students at the University of Pretoria must seek support elsewhere, and in this case, their research grants come all the way from Princeton.

This month, the Regional Initiative in Science and Education or RISE, a program run by the Institute for Advanced Study, received its third and final grant from the Carnegie Corp. of New York. Since 2008, Carnegie has given RISE more than $15 million to train scientists and engineers in sub-Saharan Africa.

Article here.