Tiny Earth

Tiny Earth is a network of instructors and students focused on crowd-sourcing antibiotic discovery from soil.

The challenges are huge...
Today we are fighting a shortage of effective antibiotics as "superbugs" evolve resistance to our most-used antibiotics. Simultaneously, we face a shortage of science trainees as unengaging introductory science courses fail to retain some of the best and brightest students in STEM fields.

But the solutions start tiny.
Unearthing new antibiotic-producing microbes from the soil can address a worldwide health threat while inspiring students to pursue careers in science. Tiny Earth brings the potential for global impact through original laboratory and field research conducted in introductory courses.

Tiny Earth is a network of instructors and students focused on crowdsourcing antibiotic discovery from soil. The mission of the program is two-fold:

First, it seeks to inspire students to pursue careers in science through original laboratory and field research conducted in introductory courses with the potential for global impact.

Second, it aims to address a worldwide health threat—the diminishing supply of effective antibiotics—by tapping into the collective power of many student researchers concurrently tackling the same challenge, living up to its motto "studentsourcing antibiotic discovery."

Read More about Tiny Earth

About the Author:

Tiny Earth as we know it was launched in June of 2018, but it truly began six years earlier when Jo Handelsman founded a course—then called "Microbes to Molecules"—at Yale University with the goal of addressing both the antibiotic crisis and the shortage of science trainees. In short order, the course grew and became a part of a larger initiative until Handelsman returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison and launched Tiny Earth in collaboration with its hundreds of partners worldwide.

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