Faculty fellows

Michael Sadowsky, Ph.D.
Director, U of M Biotechnology Institute
Distinguished McKnight University Professor

Sadowsky, who earned his Ph.D. at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu in 1983, has been on the University of Minnesota faculty since 1989. His research focuses symbiotic interaction between certain plants and soil bacteria that enables them to capture nitrogen, an essential nutrient; the use of microorganisms for biodegradation and bioremediation; the use of molecular methods to detect and assess environmental bacteria; and microbial metagenomics.

Sadowsky heads up the Minnesota Mississippi Metagenome Project (MP3), an effort to identify and characterize microbes at the headwaters of the Mississippi and evaluate human impact on the microbial community downstream. MP3 is an essential part of the HHMI Program.