United States Air Force Academy

Go to home page

Life Sciences Research Center (LSRC)

Two cadets working on a Life Science research project at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The Life Sciences Research Center’s (LSRC) primary mission is to support the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) and Air Force Surgeon General (AF/SG) though faculty and cadet research efforts.

The main objective of the LSRC is to develop basic research within a broad range of biological sciences topics. There are three main research thrusts, including biomedical, biosystems and human health/performance areas.

Core Competencies
  • Wastewater-based epidemiology for human infectious disease
  • Engineering biology – cultivating/isolating select extremophile cyanobacteria towards creating new synthetic biology tools under various environmental conditions for materials synthesis
MAJOR PROJECTS
  • Natural Materials and Systems – isolate extremophiles with interesting and robust mechanisms in order to harvest genetic parts from unusual chemistries/phenotypes found in nature, such as desiccation, biostasis, radiation resistance, etc., and impart those phenotypes into different biosystems for materials synthesis and/or synergistic functionalities.
  • Biomedical – Wastewater-based epidemiology: evaluate methodologies to perform surveillance of wastewater to identify the prevalence of human pathogens within a population. Vaccine development: investigate the immunologic response to a vaccine candidate strain of Francisella tularensis to assess cell types associated with immunity and their responses.
Contact Us

Lt. Colonel David Morris
david.morris@afacademy.af.edu