Professor Brooke Jude’s Microbial Textile Research Featured in The Scientist
Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude.
Bard Associate Professor of Biology Brooke Jude’s research on pigmented microbes has been featured in The Scientist magazine. Jude is a microbiologist who studies microorganisms cultivated from water sources. When she found a sample of violacein in the Hudson River Valley, she started studying its purple pigment in her labs and eventually moved on to dyeing fabrics with it, on her own and then in her biology classes at Bard.
Jude’s bright purple microbial dyes caught the interest of Around the World in 80 Fabrics, an organization which supports the Ain Leuh Women's Cooperative in Morocco. The microbial dyes provide a safer and more sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes. This experience led Jude to collaborate with Hassan Ghazal, Abderrazak Rfaki, and Said Barrijal to locate and process native pigmented plants from Morocco, and they also created a guide to the new pigments for the Womens’ Cooperative. “It was just incredible,” Jude says, “they want to set up this long-term collaboration too, [and there’s an] understanding that keeping microbes native to an area, indigenous to an area, is really the way forward in our field.”
Post Date: 10-07-2024
Jude’s bright purple microbial dyes caught the interest of Around the World in 80 Fabrics, an organization which supports the Ain Leuh Women's Cooperative in Morocco. The microbial dyes provide a safer and more sustainable alternative to synthetic dyes. This experience led Jude to collaborate with Hassan Ghazal, Abderrazak Rfaki, and Said Barrijal to locate and process native pigmented plants from Morocco, and they also created a guide to the new pigments for the Womens’ Cooperative. “It was just incredible,” Jude says, “they want to set up this long-term collaboration too, [and there’s an] understanding that keeping microbes native to an area, indigenous to an area, is really the way forward in our field.”
Post Date: 10-07-2024