Jacqueline Ihnat, one of the 12 Cherg Summer Scholars chosen from within the Honors College at MU in 2017. | Photo by Mary Jane Rogers, Bond LSC
By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I am able to apply what I learn in the classroom to research that makes progress towards a better future.”
Jacqueline Ihnat was recently selected as one of the 12 Cherng Summer Scholars within the Honors College at the University of Missouri. This scholarship provides her with $8,000 to fund her summer research. She’s fascinated with cells and how our bodies function, so this summer she’s studying the role of specialized stem cells in muscle regeneration and how they interact with muscle fibers—specifically the role of Eph-A3, a type of cell-surface receptor. Her faculty mentor for this project is Dawn Cornelison, an investigator in MU’s Bond Life Sciences Center.
“Doing research helps keep me focused on the bigger picture,” Ihnat said.
“Sometimes in class we learn things that don’t seem entirely relevant or useful, but being part of a research lab allows me to apply some of the knowledge that I gain in the classroom. It’s a daily reminder of why I’m learning what I am.”
Bond LSC Biologist Paula McSteen | photo by Jennifer Lu, Bond LSC
When developmental plant geneticist Paula McSteen thinks about the specimens she studies, one word comes to mind: potential.
She thought it as she stood in the midst of the first corn field she ever planted as a post-doctoral fellow in corn genetics.
She thinks it as she counts kernels from corn crosses that will be sent to Hawaii, a hotspot for corn geneticists looking to add a second harvest to their research year.
And she sees it in the students she mentors as a professor of biological sciences at MU and a researcher at the Bond Life Sciences Center.
Embracing the corn
McSteen entered the field of corn genetics 21 years ago, as a post-doctoral fellow in Berkeley.
“What’s really amazing is that when you plant a field of corn, the field is just bare,” McSteen says.
“A few weeks later, you come back and your plants are this high,” she says, gesturing with her hands. “And a few weeks later, they’re this high. And a few weeks later, they’re massive and it’s all just coming from nothing. The instructions are there in the seeds, but otherwise the plant is taking nutrients and water from the soil and using the air and sun to generate sugar for growing. It’s amazing. You come back and you’ve got this whole field of corn.”
During her first corn season, McSteen remembers being surrounded as far as the eye can see by corn as tall as people. “I feel like that’s one reason why people get into corn. You’re not staring down into a microscope, you’re embracing it. It’s right there in front of you.”
The feeling hasn’t gone away.
“When I see my plants,” McSteen says, “I’m excited about what’s going on with them. What could be happening here? What’s the meaning of these results?”
McSteen, who is Irish, grew up far removed from the sunny cornfields she works in. As a child in Dublin, she wasn’t particular outdoorsy. When her family went camping by the sea over the summer holidays, McSteen spent most of her time reading books. Her favorite subject in school was science. By the time she sat for her high school leaving exam, her classes were mainly in geography, science or math.
“I’ve always been fascinated with genetics,” McSteen says. Ever since she learned about Punnett squares in high school, its puzzle-like quality has appealed to her. “I just loved that you could figure out what the prediction could be from a certain cross.”
She applied and was accepted to her top choice university, Trinity College Dublin, where she studied genetics. She went on to pursue a PhD in Norwich, England studying how snapdragons make flowers.
When it came time for her to do her post-doc, she had the choice to work on Arabidopsis, a popular plant model, or maize, a crop with many opportunities for research funding. She chose the latter. The decision changed the course of her career, from her research focus to her country of residence.
Corn brought her to California, Pennsylvania and then the University of Missouri, which has a long history of corn genetics.
Researchers cross-pollinate corn by pouring pollen collected from the tassel over the ear. | Photograph by Jennifer Lu, Bond LSC
Everything we do starts with mutants
McSteen studies a part of corn plants called the meristem, which is filled with stem cells that become the reproductive organs of the plant: the tassel and the ears.
The tassel, where pollen is produced, is found at the top of the cornstalk, while the ears, which are the female reproductive organs, jut out from the sides. When and how they form depend on a growth hormone called auxin.
To understand auxin regulation, McSteen begins every summer with a field full of mutants. Each kernel contains a mutation, but it’s impossible to tell at first what is causing the mutation.
“To me, every single mutant is just potential. You can’t wait to find out what is mutated. You never know what you’re going to end up with.”
McSteen is interested in mutations that affect the tassels or ears. These plants produce ears with fewer kernels or tassels with fewer branches. Or they fail to make ears or tassels altogether. The defects are outward signs of problems in meristem development, and hint at disruptions to genes that are involved in how auxin is made, transported or perceived by the plant.
Once a mutant is identified, McSteen works backwards to find out which gene is causing the mutation, and where it is located on the chromosome. To date, her group has identified multiple genes related to auxin-mediated development, as well as two genes that affect the uptake or synthesis of essential nutrients.
A third project revolves around a strain of corn that produces half as many kernels as regular corn, causing it to look like grains such as rice or wheat. McSteen thinks that if they can understand what’s causing the shortfall in kernel development, it may be possible to engineer grains like rice and wheat to “double kernel” the way that corn does.
Ultimately, studying these genes help corn researchers to better understand plant development and improve yield.
Graduate student Eden Johnson photographs a mutant that has produced half as many rows of kernels. | Photograph by Jennifer Lu, Bond LSC
You always love the organism
To keep all their experiments going, the McSteen lab plants three acres of corn every summer. Each acre contains 750 rows; each row holds 30 plants.
With the aid of a hand held planter, they drop 67,500 kernels into the soil. Then they do what McSteen calls a lopsided “planter’s shuffle” to stamp the soil down so that it covers every kernel.
“You can do a whole acre of corn in a few hours,” she said. “It’s hard work. You’re sore afterwards.”
During Missouri summers, temperatures can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. It feels even hotter when it rains. The ground is either hard as a rock before it rains or so muddy after it rains that researchers have to take care not to wrench their ankles in the thick muck.
McSteen has worked on corn for so long that she’s developed severe allergies to corn pollen. It’s not uncommon among corn researchers, but her allergies prevent her from taking part in the pollination step that takes place at the height of summer.
“You’re out there in 100-degree heat getting the job done,” she says. “It’s a real bonding experience for the lab.”
To pollinate the corn, they slip paper bags over the ears and tassel of their plants. Covering the ears prevents accidental fertilization of the ears from stray pollen blown about by the wind. The bag over the tassel allows researchers to collect the yellow powder that will be used for controlled pollination.
“The next day, you bang the tassel and the pollen falls out into the bag,” McSteen says. “Then you gather it all up and you pour it on the ear.” It’s possible to pollinate about 100 plants in an hour, but you have to start early and work quickly, McSteen says. Otherwise, all the pollen is dead by noon.
McSteen’s allergies prevent her from shelling corn as well, but she’s on deck for planting and harvest time and all the other stages in between.
“If you’re a corn geneticist, you’re out there working with the plants. You always love the organism.”
Paula McSteen labels the envelope of kernels from a corn cross that will be grown in Hawaii. | Photograph by Jennifer Lu, Bond LSC
A Collaborative Community
“To be a corn geneticist, you have to be very organized and plan ahead,” McSteen says. Because it takes a long time to grow several generations of corn, she’s only beginning to see the results of experiments she started years ago.
As a way to increase productivity, corn researchers send their seeds to warm places such as Mexico, Chile or Hawaii that can accommodate a winter harvest.
In the lab, McSteen chooses kernels from carefully selected mutants to ship to an island in Hawaii. There, a company will plant and harvest the corn for her, but she usually sends two of her researchers down to take care of the pollinations themselves.
McSteen counts out thirteen yellow kernels that are shiny and mold-free. “Potential,” she says, as she slips the seeds in an envelope with the cross information labeled on the front.
A three week trip to Hawaii in the winter isn’t as exotic as it sounds, says Eden Johnson, a third year graduate student in McSteen’s lab. On the island, the beaches are rocky and full of riptides. “It is literally cornfields, one diner and a stop sign. The whole island exists for corn.”
“When you’re down there in Hawaii, you hang out with the other researchers,” McSteen says. “If their field is peaking and your field is not, then you’ll go help.”
In her experience, the corn community tends to be collaborative rather than competitive. She suspects it’s because everyone recognizes that corn takes a long time to grow.
“If you find out you’re working on similar things, you’ll work together, divide the work and do it together,” McSteen says. Researchers don’t race each other to be the first one to publish. “They won’t do that because they have respect for how long it takes to grow the corn.”
Katy Gurthrie removes a bag used to collect pollen from the tassel. | Photograph by Jennifer Lu, Bond LSC
Growing careers alongside corn
McSteen is as serious about mentorship as she is about corn. “It’s part of the job of being a professor”.
According to Katy Guthrie, a second year graduate student in the lab, McSteen takes a Goldilocks approach to managing her students.
Neither too hands on or too hands off, “it’s exactly what I need,” Guthrie says. “She’s kind of like my academic parent for the next five years.”
Back at Penn State, McSteen supervised a PhD student who was talented writer. “I noticed this and gave her opportunities to write.” McSteen introduced her to a science writer and encouraged her to spend a summer writing for a science publication. “Now she works for the National Academy of Sciences. I’m really proud of her, and I feel like she’ll have a big impact communicating science to the public.”
A post-doc wanted to do go into teaching, so McSteen invited her to co-teach her class. Her post-doc went on to become a teaching professor at Mizzou. Another student turned her research experience in mapping mutants in corn into a successful career at a corn company.
“I want to enable the people in my lab to reach their full potential,” McSteen says. “I always try to figure out what they want to do in the future and try and facilitate that.”
Dean Bergstrom, the new building manager for Bond LSC. | Photo by Mary Jane Rogers, Bond LSC
By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I provide the world class scientists of Mizzou’s Bond Life Sciences Center with the finest facilities available.”
As the new building manager for the Bond Life Sciences Center, Dean Bergstrom makes it possible for everyone else to focus on his or her research. He’s worked in Bond LSC for nine and a half years as a research technician, and in Tucker Hall eleven years before that. His unique science background and hands on knowledge of this building means that he knows exactly what scientists need to complete their projects. A facility with such diverse research interests as Bond LSC might seem overwhelming to manage, but Dean is eager to tackle the challenge.
“My background as a technician means I’m the perfect person to step into this role,” he said.
Researchers find evidence of a genetic modifier that can improve symptoms of Spinal Muscular Atrophy
Chris Lorson examines axons through a microscope. Lorson’s lab recently published results that showed evidence that the protein plastin 3 affects the severity of SMA. | Photo by Eleanor Hasenbeck, Bond LSC
Eleanor Hasenbeck | Bond Life Sciences Center
Two new potential treatments might improve the lives of patients living with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.
Researchers in the Lorson lab at Bond Life Sciences Center recently produced a new drug that increases the lifespans of mice with SMA, and they found evidence that an increased level of the protein plastin 3 lengthened life span and improved the animal’s nerve function.
Two genes impact Spinal Muscular Atrophy, SMN1 and SMN2. In a healthy body, SMN1 creates a protein called SMN that helps maintain motor neurons controlling muscle movement. If someone is born without SMN1, their body relies on SMN2 to produce this protein, but a small change in the SMN2 gene causes it to make much less of the protein than needed. This leads to SMA, a disorder where an individual loses motor and nervous function, often starting in childhood, over a number of years.
Although rare, sometimes siblings develop SMA, providing an unusual insight into SMA development. Discordant siblings — or siblings that both have SMA but have different severities of the disorder— suggest that other factors could contribute to SMA.
Researchers are investigating why this happens. One theory is that a “genetic modifier,” another gene or protein elsewhere in the DNA, impacts the severity of SMA. The protein plastin 3 could be this modifier.
Plastin 3 doesn’t improve the severe SMA mice, but extended the lives of mice with more mild cases of the disorder. The Lorson lab created its own SMA drug, an antisense oligonucleotide that allows SMN2 to produce a functional protein. The drug is capable of extending survival of SMA mice from approximately 13 days up to 150 days from a single treatment. The typical lifespan of a lab mouse is 1.3 to 3 years.
Kevin Kaifer, a graduate student in the Lorson lab, gave the SMA mice a low dose injection of the drug, increasing their lifespan to about 30 days. Then, they modified a gene in the mice to increase the level of plastin 3. Mice that received the drug and the plastin 3 therapy lived about 40% longer than mice that received only the drug.
Lorson said the results provide proof of concept that plastin 3 does not make more SMN, but actually decreased disease severity. The SMA mice showed improved neuromuscular junctions, the sites where nerve cells fire electrical impulses to the muscles in the body.
“That’s really where plastin 3 is designed to function, at the neuromuscular junction,” Lorson said. “So that brings the idea of plastin 3 full circle; it does not increase SMN, but it does improve the function of the nerve which is where plastin 3 is supposed to function normally.”
This discovery shows promise for a future treatment to some with the disease.
“SMA is a very broad clinical spectrum disease, so there are patients who have an incredibly severe form, and patients that don’t develop disease until adulthood,” said Chris Lorson, a Bond LSC scientist. “Perhaps one therapy is not going to address that very broad clinical spectrum, and you’re going to need to address different parts of the disease with different therapeutics.”
Despite it’s relative rarity as a disease, new treatments for SMA are hitting the market. In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved Spinraza, an antisense oligonucleotide similar to the drug the Lorson lab. But the infrequency of SMA means treatment comes at a cost: $750,000 for the first year of Spinraza and $375,000 for subsequent years. Spinraza is an FDA-designated orphan drug, meaning it’s a treatment for a disease that affects less than 200,000 people in the U.S. To incentivize research into rare diseases, The Orphan Drug Act allows pharmaceutical companies longer exclusive patent rights. Drugs that treat rare diseases that impact children, including Spinraza, can be allowed priority review, basically putting these drugs on a faster track from lab to market. Though the act has led to more research in certain diseases, it has sparked controversy as patients with no other treatment options are burdened with the resulting drugs’ high cost.
Still, it’s the first FDA approved treatment available to the 9,000 Americans living with SMA.
“I think collectively this is a very exciting time in the SMA field, whether we’re talking about SMN targeting compounds or drugs that are capable of augmenting function,” Lorson said. “To have a rare disease that has so many shots on goals, so to speak is really exciting.”
“The SMA community is really a model for how foundations, families, patients and government agencies can come together,” Lorson said. He said families and government agencies are often in the same room as academics, biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies during meetings.
“The amount of support from the patients, the families and the non-profit world has really helped drive SMN research… I think that’s really helped push SMA from an unknown 20 years ago, to an approved drug.”
Christian Lorson is a professor of veterinary pathobiology at the Bond LSC. His research focuses on spinal muscular atrophy. The results of this study were published in an article in JCI Insight, “Plastin-3 extends survival and reduces severity in mouse models of spinal muscular atrophy.” This work is partially funded by grants from the Muscular Dystrophy Association, FightSMA, the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, and the Missouri Spinal Cord Injury/Disease Research Program. CureSMA provided the initial support for the development of the drug/antisense oligonucleotide used in these studies.
Cool dudes, hot mommas. This is the underlying concept behind sex development in painted turtles, a species that lacks sex chromosomes.
A painted turtle’s sex is determined by temperature at which the eggs are incubated at critical stages during early development. Eggs incubated at lower temperatures produce male turtles, while those incubated at higher temperatures results in females.
However, early exposure to certain environmental chemicals that mimic hormones naturally produced in individuals can override incubation temperature. Scientists at the Bond Life Sciences Center have teamed up to study how endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), namely bisphenol A (BPA) and ethinyl estradiol (EE), result in irreversible sexual programming of the brain in painted turtles.
“Turtles do not have sex chromosomes. Instead, they demonstrate temperature sex determination. But if they are exposed to EDCs prior to when certain organs form, such chemicals can cause partial to full sex reversal to female both in terms of the gonad and brain,” said Cheryl Rosenfeld, a Bond Life Sciences Center investigator and an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri. “The males will essentially act like females in terms of their behavioral responses.”
The hormones Rosenfeld refers to are BPA and EE, two widely used EDCs. BPA is present in many commonly used household, such as plastic food storage containers, store receipts, and dental fillings. The EE is present in birth control pills and can accumulate in many aquatic environments. These chemicals have been identified in all aquatic environments tested to date, including rivers and streams. Thus, exposure of turtles and other species that inhabit such environments can potentially lead to irreversible effects.
Previously, Rosenfeld and colleagues had studied how these chemicals change behavior of painted turtles after treating the eggs with BPA and EE under male-promoting temperatures. They discovered that male turtles that are early exposed to chemicals exhibit greater spatial navigational ability and improved memory, which are considered female-typical behaviors.
Rosenfeld and colleagues postulated that if the behavioral patterns differ between those exposed to BPA and those who were not, the different behaviors may be due to underlying and persistent differences in the neural circuitry between these two groups.
Cheryl Rosenfeld is a Bond Life Sciences Center investigator and an associate professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Missouri. | photo by Jinghong Chen, Bond LSC
A gene map for turtle
In order to address this possibility, Rosenfeld teamed up with Scott Givan, associate director of the Informatics Research Core Facility, to study the gene expression profiles of the turtles and potentially identify patterns of gene expression associated with the altered behaviors.
After Rosenfeld’s team tested the behavior of the turtles, they collected RNA from the turtle brains to perform a technique called RNAseq that isolates all of the transcripts expressed in this organ. RNA is a nucleic acid that carries genetic information and is indicative of the expression level of every gene in the turtle genome. Once these sequencing results were obtained, Givan had to align the results to the painted turtle genome that has been previously sequenced and annotated. He then determined the transcripts that were differentially expressed in turtles developmentally exposed to BPA or EE versus those unexposed individuals.
There are no existing turtle gene pathway profiles. Therefore, Givan had to analyze the turtle gene expression profiles based on those previously identified in human samples.
“[One] of the most important things in this paper is the linkage of the gene expression profile to behavior difference,” Givan said. “But the gene and metabolic pathway data don’t exist for turtles. We had to basically infer pathway modeling based on the human metabolic pathway maps.”
Scott Givan is the associate director of Informatics Research Core Facility and research assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology. | photo by Jinghong Chen, Bond LSC
The results suggest that BPA and, to a much lesser extent, EE exposure overridden incubation temperature and altered the gene expression profile in the brain to potentially reprogram brain to the female rather than male pathway. Specifically, BPA exposure was associated with metabolic pathway alterations involving mitochondria, such as oxidative phosphorylation and influenced ribosomal function.
Mitochondrial activity provides energy. Up-regulation of metabolic pathways in mitochondria can lead to more energy in brain cells, which may have permitted BPA-exposed turtles to demonstrate faster responses and greater cognitive flexibility, including enhanced spatial navigational ability that was previously identified in this group.
The other changes — oxidative phosphorylation and ribosomal function — play key roles in protein synthesis. Specifically, oxidative phosphorylation generates is one of main pathways involved in generating ATP, which is considered an energy source. Ribosome functions to assemble amino acids together for the synthesis of proteins, including enzymes that may facilitate metabolic reactions.
Less appealing males
The possibility for shifting brain sex has a real impact in the wild.
In the beginning, a turtle’s brain is neutral, as it is requires hormones to sculpt and direct it to be male or female. However EDCs, such as BPA and EE, can usurp these normal pathways and cause the brain of otherwise male turtles to develop more feminine characteristics.
“There are certain programmed behaviors [male turtles] have to do to entice the female to select them as their reproductive partner, but if he is not demonstrating these male-typical behaviors, she will likely reject him,” Rosenfeld said. “Even if such chemicals reprogram the brain and subsequent adult behaviors without affecting the gonad, it could have individual and population consequences by reducing a male’s likelihood of breeding.”
Combined with possible shrinking and already inbred population, declines in male turtles or skewing of sex ratio to females that could originate due to EDC-exposure, could push turtle species that exhibit temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD) to the brink of extinction.
“The concern also with turtle species that exhibit TSD, climate change and exposure to EDCs can lead to detrimental and irreversible imbalances in sex ratio favoring females over males, and thereby compromising genetic diversity of the population as a whole,” Rosenfeld said.
Future studies in Rosenfeld’s lab plan to extend the research to female turtles to learn whether the chemicals have any effects on females derived based on TSD rather than those due to exposure to environmental chemicals that are similar to estrogen. She also hopes to look into individual brain regions, such as the forebrain and hippocampus that are essential for cognitive abilities.
Cheryl Rosenfeld is a Bond LSC investigator,associate professor of biomedical sciences, and research faculty member in the Thompson Center for Autism and Neurobehavioral Disorders. Scott Givan is the associate director of Informatics Research Core Facility and research assistant professor of molecular microbiology and immunology.
This research was funded by the Mizzou Advantage Program, the Bond Life Sciences Center and the University of Missouri Office of Research.
A partnership between MU and Gyeongsang National University in South Korea has created lasting connections
By Eleanor Hasenbeck | Bond Life Sciences Center
Discussion went global this week as researchers converged from Gyeongsang National University in South Korea, MU and Washington University at Bond Life Sciences Center for the sixth MU-GNU International Joint Symposium in Plant Biotechnology.
Plant biologists from each university shared their research, ranging from molecular biology and signaling to breeding soybeans for improved yields. The symposium is held every two years, alternating locations between the U.S. and South Korea. This conference marks the eleventh year of collaboration between GNU and MU.
“Every trip that comes over, new collaborations develop,” said Gary Stacey, a Bond LSC scientist of soybean biotechnology and chair of the symposium’s local organizing committee. “Just at dinner the other night, you could hear people talking and saying ‘We should do that together.’ You get people together and they collide, and good things come from that. The whole idea of these symposiums is try to increase those collisions.”
As those involved share new research and ideas, these collaborations create opportunities. A former student in Stacey’s lab recently received a doctoral degree from both universities as part of a joint-doctoral degree program. Undergraduate Korean students can also complete a “2+2” degree, where students can begin their studies with two years at GNU and finish with two years at MU.
The schools also exchange faculty members. GNU researchers Jong Chan Hong and Woo Sik Chung completed sabbaticals at MU. Stacey has spent time in Korea, and his lab receives funding from Korean grants.
“Getting our students to interact with Korean students and Korean faculty expands their horizons, gets them in contact with other cultures and is really part of creating an intellectual environment where students can grow,” Stacey said.
For Stacey, the symposium has also brought valued friendships. “After you’ve been over there, and you know these guys for eleven years, it’s like your cousin coming home,” he said. “You’re not a visitor anymore. You’re like part of the family.”
For more information about the science exchanged, visit http://staceylab.missouri.edu/symposium.
Researchers in the Mendoza-Cozatl lab grow beans in a soil that simulates Martian soil
By Eleanor C. Hasenbeck | Bond Life Sciences
As NASA works to send people to Mars, researchers at the Mendoza-Cozatl lab at Bond Life Sciences Center are exploring the possibility of sending beans to the red planet. The journey from Earth to Mars alone would take somewhere between 100 to 300 days. To feed astronauts on these longer missions, scientists are studying space horticulture.
Norma Castro, a research associate in the lab, studies how common beans grow in a soil that simulates Mars’ red soil. The common bean is a good candidate for interstellar cultivation. Beans are a very nutritious crop, and their affinity for nitrogen-fixing bacteria can improve soil health while requiring less fertilizer. Castro is trying to understand how different varieties of beans could grow in the soil.
“This kind of research not only will tell us the right plants to take to Mars, but also which kind of technology needs to be developed,” Castro said.
Erica Majumder, a biochemistry Ph.D candidate. | photo by Mary Jane Rogers, Bond LSC
By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I am endlessly curious and the world needs scientific solutions to our grand challenges.”
That is the attitude of someone who does her research with a purpose. Since the age of 14, Erica knew she wanted to pursue a degree in chemistry. Today, she uses that passion to research how anaerobic bacteria interact with uranium; essentially asking the question, “How do microbes and metals interact?”
What’s her end game? Improved health of the environment.
Neuroscientist and former Secretary of State science adviser to speak at Life Sciences Week
Frances Colón has spent the past decade representing the United States all over the world on topics ranging from climate change to the advancement of women scientists. She will reflect on that experience in her talk at 3:30 p.m. Monday, April 11 in Monsanto Auditorium. | Photo courtesy of Frances Colón
By Eleanor C. Hasenbeck | Bond Life Sciences
A career in science doesn’t only mean working in a lab, and no one knows that better than Frances Colón.
Colón, a neuroscientist by training and policy maker by trade, will speak about how scientists can become more involved in policy without abandoning the laboratory bench.
During her Missouri Life Sciences Week lecture “My path to science citizenship,” Colón will talk about her transition from the lab to policy. She’ll speak 3:30 p.m. Monday, April 10, in Monsanto Auditorium.
“I think scientists need to realize that they have a broader set of skills than they give themselves credit for that can be applied to the service of the community and their country in many different ways,” said Colón. “I think we’re living in a time where our country needs scientists to get engaged at every level. That doesn’t mean they need to leave a career in academia to go into policy, but it could certainly mean involvement everywhere from the community level to the national level.”
After receiving a doctoral degree in neuroscience and studying how nerve cells mature at Brandeis University, Colón first got involved in making policy as an American Association for the Advancement of Sciences policy fellow. She then served as science and environment adviser for western hemisphere affairs for more than three years before she became deputy science and technology adviser to the Secretary of State, a position she served in until January.
As deputy science adviser, she led efforts to reengage Cuba in scientific collaboration after U.S. policy regarding Cuba shifted. She also coordinated climate change policy for the Energy and Climate Partnership of the Americas, and she worked to advance women and girls in science, technology, engineering and math. Today, she looks to use platforms outside of the government to accomplish the same missions.
Colón said of her career thus far, she is most proud of the work she’s done to educate women in opportunities in STEM careers.
“A lot of these countries started to realize that they can’t tackle a lot of the biggest challenges they’re confronting, from climate change to energy security, without having all of their best talent at the table. That required providing equal opportunity for women and men to achieve these positions,” Colón said. “We worked a lot on finding opportunities for girls to discover STEM careers and to help countries plan out what their STEM capacity building activities could be.”
These activities included things like the two-week camps for girls in South America and Africa, where they learned about coding and genetics with help from corporate partners.
Colón holds a doctorate from Brandeis University, and a bachelor’s degree in biology from the University of Puerto Rico. She was a delegate to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ Young Leaders Forum, and a graduate of the National Hispana Leadership Institute. Last year, she was named one of the 20 most influential Latinos in technology by CNET en Español.
Colón will speak at 3:30 Monday, April 10 in Monsanto Auditorium as part of Missouri Life Sciences Week.
Sheryl Koenig, the Grant Proposal Manager at Bond LSC. | photo by Mary Jane Rogers, Bond LSC
By Mary Jane Rogers | Bond LSC
“#IAmScience because I need to connect the dots. How do all the puzzle pieces fit together? Why do things do what they do? How can I apply that to other things?”
For Sheryl Koenig, science communication is an enormous part of her daily tasks. She works with researchers and scientists during the grant proposal process to translate technical scientific concepts into persuasive and relevant content. Why? So that those scientists can access the means to expand their #MizzouResearch and make exciting breakthroughs. Sheryl literally helps turn their ideas and dreams into reality! #scicomm
