Uploaded March 2024 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Abe Stone is living proof that you don’t have to wait until you graduate from Michigan Tech to take on the most complex problems facing the world. Funded by a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), Abe helped develop an alternative to chemical herbicides. A native fungus nicknamed SuperPurp is his not-so-secret weapon to beat back the widespread Midwest invasion of two species of buckthorn trees. The trees are gaining a foothold across the upper Midwest, altering the character of forests. Stone inoculates them with SuperPurp, weakening the invasive trees to give native species a chance to rebound. “If we want to make sure our native oaks, maples, alders and birches still stand, we’ll have to create measures that at the very least mediate other species’ impacts on our forest processes,” he says.
Learn about Abe’s fieldwork in Stories From Husky Nation: https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/2024/03/fungus-among-us-mtu-student-using-native-fungi-to-weaken-invasive-trees.html
Find out more about ecology and evolutionary biology majors at Tech: https://www.mtu.edu/biological/undergraduate/ecology-evolution/
Check out natural resources career paths at Tech:
https://www.mtu.edu/forest/undergraduate/
Set up your visit to campus (when you see, you’ll know.): https://www.mtu.edu/admissions/visit/plan/
#TomorrowNeeds #MichiganTech
Abe Stone is living proof that you don’t have to wait until you graduate from Michigan Tech to take on the most complex problems facing the world. Funded by a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF), Abe helped develop an alternative to chemical herbicides. A native fungus nicknamed SuperPurp is his not-so-secret weapon to beat back the widespread Midwest invasion of two species of buckthorn trees. The trees are gaining a foothold across the upper Midwest, altering the character of forests. Stone inoculates them with SuperPurp, weakening the invasive trees to give native species a chance to rebound. “If we want to make sure our native oaks, maples, alders and birches still stand, we’ll have to create measures that at the very least mediate other species’ impacts on our forest processes,” he says.
Learn about Abe’s fieldwork in Stories From Husky Nation: https://www.mtu.edu/unscripted/2024/03/fungus-among-us-mtu-student-using-native-fungi-to-weaken-invasive-trees.html
Find out more about ecology and evolutionary biology majors at Tech: https://www.mtu.edu/biological/undergraduate/ecology-evolution/
Check out natural resources career paths at Tech:
https://www.mtu.edu/forest/undergraduate/
Set up your visit to campus (when you see, you’ll know.): https://www.mtu.edu/admissions/visit/plan/
#TomorrowNeeds #MichiganTech
