Students present research at national conference

Students attending the national conference included (from left): Chinedu Nworu, a junior biotechnology major; Rosemary Flores, a senior biochemistry major; Cherie Dotson, coordinator of the NUCLEUS and UD’s Bridges programs; Melody Jones, nursing major; Nickia Naylor, nursing major; Jacqueline Aldridge, coordinator of the Delaware Technical and Community College (DTCC) Bridges Program; Alia Sommerville, a junior medical technology major; and Nicole Barkley, a junior biotechnology major. Not shown is Kenneth Fomulu, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute research scholar and a junior chemistry major at Delaware State University. DTCC students and participants in the UD-Delaware Tech partnership, Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program, also attended.

4:51 p.m., Dec. 9, 2004--Minority students in UD’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) NUCLEUS Program and the National Institutes of Health Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program presented posters of their research at the annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) held in Dallas, Nov. 10-13.

More than 1,400 students attended the conference keynoted by Shirley Ann Jackson, president of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, former chairperson of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Benjamin Carson, surgeon, professor, author and director of pediatric neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, who is renowned for his work in separating conjoined twins, also addressed participants.

ABRCMS gives minority students an opportunity to present their work in a scientific forum and interact with students from across the nation.

NUCLEUS students attending the conference included Chinedu Nworu, a junior biotechnology major; Alia Sommerville, a junior medical technology major; Rosemary Flores, a senior biochemistry major; Nicole Barkley, a junior biotechnology major; and Kenneth Fomulu, an HHMI research scholar and a junior chemistry major at Delaware State University. Delaware Technical and Community College (DTCC) students, Nickia Naylor and Melody Jones, nursing majors and participants in the UD-Delaware Tech partnership, Bridges to the Baccalaureate Program, also attended.

Cherie Dotson, coordinator of the NUCLEUS and UD’s Bridges programs, and Jacqueline Aldridge, coordinator of the DTCC Bridges Program, accompanied the students to Dallas where Dotson, Aldridge and Anissa Brown, UD research assistant and biological sciences doctoral candidate, served as judges for the poster session.

Four students made research poster presentations. Nworu, whose faculty mentor is David Usher, associate professor of biological sciences, was one of four students at the conference selected to participate in the 2004 Minority and Indigenous Fellows Program that comes with an all-expense-paid trip to San Francisco to attend a biotechnology conference. Other presenters were Sommerville, mentored by Fiona E. Benson, lecturer at Lancaster University in Lancaster England; Naylor, mentored by Diane Herson, associate professor of biological sciences; and Fomulu, a junior at Delaware State University, mentored by Roberta Colman, professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

As one of 12 academic institutions cosponsoring the conference, UD exhibited its Integrative Graduate Education, Research and Training Program, an interdisciplinary program in biotechnology funded by National Science Foundation fellowships.

Article by Barbara Garrison

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