May 15, 2009

Two students awarded research fellowships 

Writer: Colby Flint

The Idaho Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE) awarded a summer research fellowship and $5,000 to two Brigham Young University–Idaho students on May 5.
    

Giovanni Crosland of Preston, Idaho, and Benjamin Jaderholm of Moses Lake, Washington, were awarded the fellowship based on GPA and laboratory experience. Crosland will be studying at the University of Idaho, and Jaderholm at Boise State University, both from May 26 until August 5.
    

Crosland plans to graduate next April with a major in biology and a minor in chemistry. After finishing his undergraduate work, he plans on going to medical school and becoming a surgeon. This summer, Crosland will be studying the structure and folding patterns of RNA using IR spectroscopy. He looks forward to gaining a better appreciation for biochemical research, which he said “is the foundation for understanding how the body functions.”
    

Jaderholm will be conducting research with Dr. Juliette Tinker of Boise Sate University, who has listed her potential summer projects as either characterizing a potential vaccine against the plague, or analyzing the trafficking patterns of enterotoxin chimeras in tissue culture.
    

In the past nine years, INBRE has funded laboratory experiences for 562 undergraduate students at Idaho colleges and universities.
    

“INBRE has provided the opportunity for students to gain a real understanding of research and to work with some of the state’s most experienced scientists, many of them world leaders in their specialties,” said Carolyn Hovde Bohach, the network’s director and a University of Idaho professor of microbiology.
  

INBRE was founded in 2001 with a $6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health Institutional Development Award program. Since then, the NIH National Center for Research Resources has provided a total of $40 million for the network, including a $16.5 million renewal grant this year, extending it until 2014.