Dr. Julie Drawbridge (center) with her research team -- (from left) Lauren Sferrazza, Heather Landis, James Leone, Kristine Casale, April Kmetz and Vanessa Gerrard.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) program has awarded its third grant since 2000 to Dr. Julie Drawbridge, department chair and professor of biology at Rider University, to support her continuing research of embryonic cell migration during kidney duct formation.

According to a recent search of the NSF Awards database, Drawbridge has two of the approximately ten NSF RUI grants in developmental biology in the country – one grant that is ending and the one just awarded of $277,000 for three years.

Drawbridge says the new grant focuses on two areas. “My students and I will conduct a comparative study on the embryos of frogs and salamanders to determine how different amphibians are constructing the kidney duct. We will also investigate how the cells begin to communicate with their destination tissue to actually make the conduit for the urine to get out of the body. Very little is known about this process.

“Obviously, if this doesn’t happen, there can be defects in the uro-genital system,” she added. “We know that there are defects in humans when that plumbing event hasn’t occurred properly.”

During the past ten years, Drawbridge has mentored more than 30 undergraduate students working on this project. Seldom is there a time when students aren’t conducting experiments in her lab.

Her current student research team includes James Leone, a junior English/biology double major; Heather Landis, a junior English major; Kristine Casal, a junior biology major; April Kmetz, a senior biopsychology major; and Lauren Sferrazza, a sophomore biology major. Vanessa Gerrard ’05 serves as lab technician.

“It is important to me that this is a real scientific project, and students enter at different stages,” Drawbridge noted. “They have scientific predecessors who are Rider graduates. Some have gone on to medical schools, some to graduate schools, and some are now teachers. They were all trying to understand the same phenomenon. This is really a neat thing for them to be part of that history.”

Drawbridge has received over $1.1 million in continuous support of her research since 1997 – first from the National Institutes of Health and the New Jersey Commission on Cancer Research and then the NSF RUI program.

“Although I have received my share of research support, the level of funding for the biology department is extraordinary for an institution of Rider’s size,” Drawbridge said. “If you search federal databases for awards to biology departments at primarily undergraduate institutions, you will find there aren’t many that have been able to attract research funding comparable to the Rider biology department.”

Since 1996, Rider’s eight-member biology department has amassed more than $4.4 million in grant support with $1.14 million committed to current research, all with undergraduate researchers.

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