MARC/IMSD

#IAmScience Sara Ricardez Hernandez

May 7, 2021 By Becca Wolf in #IAmScience Tags: MARC/IMSD, SACNAS, spinal muscular atrophy

By Becca Wolf | Bond LSC

As an undergraduate student, Sara Ricardez Hernandez did not have mentors that exposed her to the many opportunities available for underrepresented students — like summer programs and other research initiatives — but now a graduate student and a Life Sciences fellow, Ricardez Hernandez wants to make sure that no one else is ever in that boat.

“I really like advocating for other people like myself. For example, the university that I went to for undergrad had very little mentoring for minority students, so I want to help people not only be able to get a Ph.D. but be even better scientists and have more opportunities than the ones I had,” said Ricardez Hernandez, a current member of the Chris Lorson lab at Bond Life Sciences Center.

She has not wasted any time. She is currently the vice president of Mizzou’s chapter of the Society for Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS). SACNAS is a program that provides networking and professional development opportunities for minority students.

“We try to help students by hosting workshops and inviting different diverse researchers so students see that they can succeed in academia and become principal investigators too,” Ricardez Hernandez said. “When I first arrived at Mizzou, I knew they had a chapter here and I was very excited about that. I even contacted some people before classes started and I was like, ‘Hey, I’m really interested in becoming a member’ — I had been president for the Hispanic Latino Association in undergrad — so I knew that I wanted to keep helping students.”

Ricardez Hernandez also serves as a graduate student mentor with MARC/IMSD (Maximizing Access to Research Careers/Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity) at Mizzou. She currently mentors six undergraduate students where she provides support and advice regarding their research, academics, and any personal issues that may be barriers to their success.

“One of my biggest passions is mentoring and trying to push higher education into a more equitable future,” Ricardez Hernandez said. “Historically, higher education has lacked diversity, so we do not see a lot of role models for minority students like professors or PIs. Showing students that, ‘Hey, I’m here at Mizzou, I’m a minority as well and I’m passionate about what I’m doing,’ can demonstrate to undergrads that they can do that too.”

Ricardez Hernandez’s energy is contagious.

“Her mentees think highly of her. She is transparent and vulnerable in sharing her own previous challenges and that makes her so relatable,” Brian Booton, Undergraduate Director of MARC/IMSD at Mizzou, said. “I think we sometimes put mentors on a pedestal and think of them not struggling themselves or that they’ve never had difficulties, but I think she’s really authentic with the ways in which she’s grown. She’s able to reflect on those lessons and reframe them as social capital making her a very effective mentor.”

Ricardez Hernandez extends her passion for education in the lab and her studies as well. She is in the Molecular Pathogenesis and Therapeutics Program where she studies neuromuscular infantile diseases. She is currently working on the characterization of respiratory defects in spinal muscular atrophy with respiratory distress type 1 (SMARD1) and the applications for potential therapeutics.

“I think it keeps me going. Sometimes it’s hard being a graduate student, and not everything works out all the time or you have a lot of things going on but studying diseases like SMARD1 makes me want to come to lab every day and keep doing what I’m doing,” Ricardez Hernandez said.

With a few years left at Mizzou, Ricardez Hernandez plans on helping as many people as she can.

“She’s a real advocate and champion for her mentees,” Booton said. “She’s so approachable and genuine and she’s been a great asset to the program.”

#IAmScience Alana Rodney

October 16, 2020 By Lauren Hines in #IAmScience Tags: animal science, cancer, MARC/IMSD

By Lauren Hines | Bond LSC

Research assistant Alana Rodney walked into her high school science class a few years ago expecting to fill another credit. However, it was there that she found her love of genetics.

“I just remember doing the lab and I learned how to use a pipette,” Rodney said. “I was like, ‘Oh, my goodness. This is so cool.’”

Fast forward to now and Rodney just completed her undergraduate degree in May 2019. And she’s not stopping there as she now pursues a master’s in animal science, genetics and genomics to create better treatments for common diseases and cancers.

“I want to eventually study cancers in humans and disease treatments for different types of cancers and other diseases that affect people in general, but especially the Black community because that’s really important to me,” Rodney said.

Rodney plans on eventually applying what she learns from the genome of cats to humans, especially cancer research.

“Cancer definitely has had a big effect on my family,” Rodney said. “A lot of people in my family have breast cancer and other types of diseases. I do think some of that is due to the environment that my family was in. I know that has a direct effect on the genetics of a person. So, some of this hits close to home for me.”

Rodney entered the world of research as an undergrad through the Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (IMSD) program. It is now called the Maximizing Access to Research Careers (MARC) program.

“The IMSD/MARC program is also one of the main reasons that I am in science right now,” Rodney said.

IMSD/MARC helps develop the research and professional skills of students from underrepresented groups by paying students to work in labs and exposing them to research.

“The IMSD/MARC program gave me a real sense of community in science,” Rodney said. “I was with a bunch of other students who have similar debt and probably wouldn’t be in grad school if it wasn’t for that program. It really gave me the motivation and push I needed to keep going even when school got hard. Having a community to really say, ‘Okay, let’s study. Okay, let’s talk about it.’”

For the past year, Rodney has been in the Wes Warren lab at the Bond Life Sciences Center working on bioinformatics and experiments for her thesis project.

“She’s been a joy to work with, and she’s very hungry to learn,” said Warren, a primary investigator at Bond LSC. “That’s what I really value in anybody that I work with.”

Rodney recently submitted her first paper to the journal Scientific Reports where she was the first author. The paper explored the effectiveness of whole-exome sequencing, (WES) which is a cost-effective strategy that sequences coding regions in DNA.

WES is usually used on human diseases that express multiple observable characteristics called, phenotypes. This makes it hard to classify which disease it is. WES also helps to identify alleles in genes that cause certain diseases.

In this instance, WES was applied to the DNA of diseased cats and was compared to the DNA of healthy cats as a baseline. WES discovered new variants — differences from the norm — for certain kidney disease in cats.

“That puts it out into the literature so that veterinarians and scientists that are interested in investigating that particular disease now have a candidate they can pursue,” Warren said.

The new variants were labeled as potential causative alleles of the kidney disease in cats.

“That was a nice paper to show that whole-exome sequencing in cats is possible, and that is a viable way to get data on the disease from the cats versus whole-genome sequencing. So basically, the paper just showed the effectiveness of whole-exome sequencing.”

Other strategies like whole genome sequencing cost more and provide slower results, so demonstrating WES as an effective option for research can help further the field.

In addition to her experiments, Rodney loves introducing children to the world of science.

“I’m really passionate about outreach and working with the youth and supporting them,” Rodney said. “I like to do science outreach, so I’ll go to elementary schools and talk with kids in the neighborhood, and if they want to do a science experiment, I’ll do it with them.”

Maybe in one of those science classrooms, Rodney can inspire a new student to pursue a field they love, just like her.

MARC/IMSD awarded grant to continue training diverse scientists

June 3, 2020 By Jerome Duggan in Research Tags: MARC/IMSD, NIH

New funding changes some structure to program

By Jerry Duggan | Bond LSC

Mizzou was always near the top of Olivia Warner’s list for Ph.D. programs.

Its renowned psychological sciences program, sound training in Warner’s specialty of addiction and supportive, collaborative atmosphere that she didn’t see at other places made it a top choice on paper.

But she was not introduced to her most formative program in terms of professional development until she had already moved across the country from Arizona to mid-Missouri. Within her first month, Warner learned of the Maximizing Access to Research Careers/Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (MARC/IMSD) program.

“I found out about IMSD right away, and I’m glad I did,” Warner said. “Without this program, I would have had a tougher time networking on campus, and wouldn’t have picked up a lot of the skills that I have today.”

MARC/IMSD is a federal program that partners with universities to identify and train the next generation of researchers in biomedical and behavioral sciences. It provides research, mentoring, academic and social support, and professional development to help them along the way to doctoral degrees that will lead them to diversify the workforce. These underserved students include minorities from different ethnic and racial backgrounds, those with disabilities, students from low socioeconomic backgrounds and first-generation college students. The program gives them a helping hand in graduate school.

“Evidence says teams from diverse backgrounds approach problems differently and, ultimately, better in terms of solutions than teams of individuals from similar backgrounds,” said Dr. Mark Hannink, director of MARC/IMSD, Bond Life Sciences Center principal investigator and Biochemistry faculty member. “Data drives the National Institutes of Health’s recognition that entire research enterprises benefit from different perspectives and approaches.”

For 20 years, Mizzou was the recipient of an MARC/IMSD grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), that provided mentored research training and professional development to both undergraduate and graduate students. Hannink said that while the mentoring and professional development will continue, there will be changes in MARC/IMSD’s structure with the new grant. The most significant change is that the undergraduate and graduate training programs are now separated into two different grant-funded programs. The graduate MARC/IMSD program, which will become a T32 training program, has recently received $2.2M in funding from NIH to support training of 25 students over five years. A number of units at MU, including the School of Medicine, College of Veterinary Medicine, College of Engineering, College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resources, the Division of Biological Sciences and the Graduate School, have provided funding to support training of at least 10 additional students. The MARC/IMSD program is truly a partnership between NIH and MU that will have a significant impact on diversity in biomedical research.

“This is more than just a scholarship,” Hannink said. “It’s a training program, in which students develop three different areas of expertise that our students need to develop to become successful scientists: professional, technical and operational skills.”

These objectives include increasing the percentage of underrepresented minorities in participating biomedical predoctoral students to 20% from 16%, to improve the Ph.D. completion rate for such students to 90% from its current 84%. An end goal is that 30% of trainees obtain external fellowships during their time in the program.

While MARC/IMSD provides two years of financial support to participants, its key focus is to foster professional development programs, workshops and support mechanisms to ensure that students in the program have whatever they need to succeed.

Coming out of Arizona State University with degrees in Psychology and Human Development, Warner worked full time for three years and volunteered in a lab, researching the ways in which contextual and interpersonal factors influence alcohol use motives and subsequent problematic use.

Despite significant research experience, Warner’s transition into the six-year clinical psych sciences Ph.D. program would have been much more difficult if not for MARC/IMSD.

“I was connected with Dr. Hannink pretty much immediately after I arrived on campus, and surrounded with people in the program that had a lot of shared experiences with me,” she said. “The program provided extra support and a sense of togetherness for us, which is really important since a lot of us are underrepresented in Ph.D. programs. It really helps to be around a group of people you can relate to and connect with.”

Under the new grant, much of the mentoring aspect of the program will remain the same, but the new format will be much more explicit in terms of the specific training activities used to develop said technical, operational and professional skills.

In addition to moral support and togetherness, MARC/IMSD aims to equip participants with academic skills. For Warner, who just completed her second year of the program, this meant taking a professional development class taught by Hannink. The class included a segment on public speaking which was especially beneficial for Warner.

“Having public speaking and presentation skills is a large part of any successful researcher’s skill set, so it was really helpful for me to be able to develop those skills early on in the program,” Warner said.

Participants also complete rotations in other labs besides their own as part of the program in order to broaden their knowledge about all areas of research, and are given opportunities to network with experts in the field. Many cycle through labs within Bond LSC.

“The next generation of researchers need to have exposure to disciplines outside their degree, to be able to talk with people doing research that’s very different than their own and collaborate effectively,” Hannink said.

Warner wants to be able to continue her research in some capacity for the rest of her career, so being a well-rounded graduate able to face any challenges thrown at her is invaluable.

“Everything I’ve been a part of in this program, from the professional development class, to being exposed to areas of research I might not have otherwise known anything about, has been very beneficial,” she said.

The science community as a whole reaps benefits from this development.

“Any research effort is more effective if it’s inclusive and brings different perspectives and approaches to the problem, and that’s how the skills IMSD teaches really translate long term into a better biomedical workforce.”

MU received a National Institutes of Health five-year grant for $2,228,008 to continue its focus on minority graduate student development in biomedical and behavioral sciences. This grant started February 1, 2020.

#IAmScience Madison Ortega

December 29, 2017 By Allison Scott in #IAmScience Tags: biology, MARC/IMSD

By Allison Scott | Bond Life Sciences Center

“#IAmScience because research gives me an avenue to explore my curiosity and possibly discover something groundbreaking.”

Research is all about discovering the answers to the unknown, pushing boundaries and exploring the depths of the field. As a junior biology major, Madison Ortega is already getting a taste of that.

Her freshman year, Ortega got a brochure for the Maximizing Access to Research Careers/Initiative for Maximizing Student Diversity (MARC/IMSD) program. This program encourages students to get involved with science even if they have had little exposure to it previously. Its ultimate goal is to provide a foundation of advanced science skills for minorities that can be applied to higher degrees within the field.

“I got to start exploring research right away through IMSD,” Ortega said. “It gave me the opportunity to look into various labs.”

Ortega landed on working in Cheryl Rosenfeld’s lab at Bond LSC because she felt she would have ample opportunities. That experience has led her to an individual project working on samples of spiny rats — an endangered species from Japan.

“The male doesn’t have a Y chromosome, so we’re trying to figure out how sexual differentiation occurs in the species without it,” Ortega said.

Through Bond LSC, she connected with Hokkaido University in Japan who donated the samples.

“They’re not fresh samples — they’re about 10 years old,” Ortega said. “But I showed interest in the project and ended up getting to work on it one-on-one with our lab mentor.”

In addition to her individual project, Ortega works with other undergraduates within her lab.

“We’re doing a variety of experiments that include social testing on mice,” Ortega said. “We do anxiety testing and also perform Barnes maze with the animals.”

These mazes and tests aim to see the impact of chemicals in the environment that mimic hormones like estrogen and impact animal growth and development.

“Basically, we’re trying to see how endocrine disruptors we feed the mice affect their offspring,” Ortega said. “We want to know how it affects them neurologically. In order to accomplish this, we are collaborating with various other groups in Bond LSC.”

Ultimately, they’re aiming to uncover if Bisphenol S (BPS) has any impact on the mice neurologically. These substances are similar to Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used as a hardener in production of plastics and in other manufacturing. As concern has raised over BPA, companies have replaced the chemical with BPS and others to allay public anxiety over its impact. But not much research has been done on BPS and its effect on animals.

“They may be found to have some neurological effects, so research is trying to uncover what exactly those are,” Ortega said. “The many tests we run will help us understand to the extent these chemicals are affecting us.”

After graduation, Ortega envisions herself continuing with research as a focal point of her career.

“I love research,” Ortega said. “My end goal is medical school, but I’m considering a program that combines a master’s degree with a Ph.D. in either dermatology or pediatrics.”

Regardless of her path, the lab work she does now leaves her prepared for the future.

“I spend a lot of time in the lab with my team and individually,” Ortega said. “It’s fun to have ownership of a project, and it’s also fun to work with other undergraduates and have camaraderie. I’m really fortunate.”