Department of Microbiology Associate Professor Matthew Anderson has been awarded funding through the Science Diversity Leadership Program of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the organization announced last month.

Anderson, like each of the 25 grant recipients, is being awarded $1.15 million over five years for his project “Defining the Microbial Eukaryote Contributions to Rheumatoid Arthritis in American Indians.” Anderson's project will explore the fact that Lakota individuals experience an incidence of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) that is five times higher than the national average. The source of that increase is unclear. Recent evidence suggests a role for the microbiome in contributing to RA, and this project will identify microbial eukaryotes associated with elevated rheumatoid arthritis incidence in Northern Plains American Indian communities and test taxa for disease outcomes.

The Science Diversity Leadership program, is a funding opportunity that aims to recognize and further the leadership of excellent biomedical researchers who — through their outreach, mentoring, teaching, and leadership — have a record of promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in their scientific fields.

The program supports projects led by outstanding early- to mid-career faculty at U.S. universities, medical schools,and nonprofit research institutes who advance research and act as mentors, sponsors, and role models for underrepresented groups in biomedical science. In addition, CZI will connect project leads with national and international scientific leaders through convenings.

Anderson is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology as well as the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity in the College of Medicine. His research interests lie in finding intriguing questions in science and addressing them using novel and classical molecular approaches that rely on a mix of genetics, molecular biology and informatics.