Dennis Shasha, Associate Director of NYU WIRELESS, has received $700,000 in funding from the NSF(National Science Foundation). Shasha is exploring the genomic basis for how plants use Nitrogen. His projects aim to figure out how to make farming more efficient, as well as minimize the impact of fertilizer on the environment.

The recent NSF funding will assist in determining which genes to amplify or which ones to repress to make plants use Nitrogen more efficiently. The work could help farmers use less fertilizer which could make food less expensive and minimize harm to the environment.