Experts & Speakers Faculty Profile
Carl Bauer
Endowed Professor, Department of Biology
Class of ’54 Endowed Professor, Department of Biology
IU Bloomington
Interests:
Molecular biology and genetics; microbiology; plant biologyEducation:
- B.S. in Microbiology at University of Minnesota, 1978
- Ph.D. in Microbiology at University of Illinois, 1986
- PD at E.I.DuPont de Nemours & Co.
Background:
Current researchThe laboratory interests fall into two categories:
1. The regulation of gene expression by environmental factors such as light and oxygen.
2. Differentiation of bacteria into different cell types.
Carl Bauer, Department of Biology, has received a National Institutes of Health Method to Extend Research in Time (MERIT) award, with a monetary value of $5 million during the course of a decade, provided Bauer satisfies the conditions of renewal in 2011. Only a few MERIT awards are given out to NIH-funded researchers each year. The MERIT award program supports scientists who have successful track records, freeing them to focus on important questions related to human health and biology. The work for which Bauer is being rewarded is focused on the growth of bacteria in the presence and absence of oxygen. Understanding how bacteria thrive under low- or zero-oxygen conditions can lead to new techniques that limit the infection of humans by bacteria that are able to live with and without oxygen. Staphylococcus aureus--the perpetrator of staph infections--is one such organism. Bauer is the second Department of Biology faculty member and the ninth person campus-wide to receive a MERIT award. Past recipients are biologist Norman Pace, chemists John Richardson and Paul Grieco, and psychologists Richard Shiffrin, Jeffrey Alberts, Russell Fazio, Richard Rose and the late Esther Thelen.
-- An excerpt from the June 23, 2006 newsletter for IU faculty and staff
