Iowa State University will be the “virtual” home for a national effort to coordinate research of drug-resistant “super bugs.” Paul Plummer of Iowa State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine has a doctorate in veterinary microbiology. He’s been part of a task force that’s worked for the past three years to develop the plan for the Institute for Antimicrobial Resistance Research.

I-S-U is providing office space and information technology services for the institute. Iowa State and the University of Nebraska together will provide more than half a million dollars a year for the project in each of the next three years. Plummer says the goal is to pool resources and spark a team-oriented approach to the research that’s going on around the country.

The new I-S-U institute will focus not only on “super bugs” that impact humans, but the drug-resistant bacteria that impact animals and the environment.