Montana INBRE E-Newsletter Winter 2018

The Food and Health Lab is taking off

Turn to page 5 to learn how we mean “taking off” literally

Community Engagement 2.0

Three Montana IDeA programs, one shared Core

Mine & Body: Measuring hazardous metals in Butte

A new paper out of MT Tech looks at metals in residents’ bodies

Contents COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT 2.0

Big things are happening in the Community Engagement Core .......

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CAFÉ SCIENTIFIQUE

The predictive power of mathematical modeling ........................

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FACILITY IN FLIGHT

The Food & Health Lab is taking off .................................................

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PUBLICATION SPOTLIGHT

Mine & Body: Montana Tech professor Katie Hailer measures metal content in Butte’s environment and human population ............

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RECENTLY PUBLISHED

New contributions to the literature ................................................

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SUCCESS STORIES

Co Carew wins career-enhancement award; INBRE student Maggie Russell reflects on receiving a Goldwater Scholarship ..........

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Susan Higgins, INBRE & CAIRHE Community Research Associate

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Bulletin board, regional & national conferences, and more.................

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WELCOME OPPORTUNITIES & ANNOUNCEMENTS

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MONTANA INBRE

Montana INBRE is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences division of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM103474.

THIS ISSUE

INBRE grants are designed to enhance biomedical research capacity, expand and strengthen the research capabilities of biomedical faculty and provide access to biomedical resources for promising undergraduate and graduate students throughout eligible states.

P.O. Box 173500 AJM Johnson Hall #217 Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717-3500 Tel: 406-994-3360 www.inbre.montana.edu

This publication and select research reported therein was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM103474. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Editor & Design Bill Stadwiser Assistant Editors Ann Bertagnolli, Barbara Bunge Photography Kelly Gorham, Adrian Sanchez-Gonzalez, MSU Communications as noted, William Stadwiser Cover Selena Ahmed & Carmen Byker Shanks at the Food & Health Lab at MSU. Photo by Bill Stadwiser Printing University Printing Services, Montana State University Additional Thanks: Tomas Gedeon (MSU), Katie Hailer (MT Tech), Selena Ahmed (MSU), Carmen Byker Shanks (MSU), James Burroughs (MSU), Co Carew (SKC), Maggie Russell (MSU), Susan Higgins (MSU), Anne Cantrell (MSU News Service)

Introducing the Montana IDeA Community Engagement Core Three Montana-based IDeA programs are pooling resources and sharing access to one of the most unique research Cores in Montana and the Western US. tarting in late 2017, the three National Institutes of Health (NIH) Institutional Development Award (IDeA) Programs housed at Montana State University – Montana IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity (CAIRHE), and the American Indian Alaska Native Clinical and Translational Research Program (AI/AN CTRP) – began sharing a single Community Engagement Core.

seeing real opportunities to coordinate efforts,” said Bertagnolli.

Dubbed the Montana IDeA Community Engagement Core (CEC), the new shared Core is tasked with fostering and enhancing equitable tribal and rural community-researcher partnerships aimed at mitigating health disparities within these communities.

“Trainings and consultations will help investigators develop and sustain respectful community-academic research partnerships, discuss respectful agreements regarding data ownership and results dissemination, and identify strategies for addressing potential barriers proactively,” she said.

Although each IDeA program will retain its own unique research priorities, project portfolio, and program identity, Montana INBRE Program Coordinator Ann Bertagnolli says that the move to consolidate is part of a larger effort to reduce redundancy, improve access to resources, and maximize the impacts and value of NIH investment in the state.

“In the past, the separate Community Engagement Cores functioned moreor-less autonomously on paper, but because we already shared key personnel, big-picture goals, and commitment to community-based participatory research principles, all three programs began

Topmost among those shared goals include providing better access to expertise and training opportunities for Montana researchers, added Bertagnolli.

The Montana model works, and we’d be thrilled to see parts of it adopted by other states with similar research opportunities and needs.

According to CAIRHE Director Alex Adams, the shared Core’s methodological approach will be grounded in communitybased participatory research (CBPR) principles – a community-academic partnership approach that equitably involves community members in all aspects of the research process.

“Communities need to be equitable collaborators in the research from the very beginning and continue in that role throughout the entire research cycle,” said Adams, who in addition to directing CAIRHE is a respected CBPR researcher.

“CBPR principles have a long track record

of building those equitable partnerships successfully in Montana and elsewhere, so they’re central to the CEC’s work.”

Implementing Core’s mission will be a team of Community Research Associates (CRAs) – experts at using CBPR principles to engage rural and Native communities and create mutually beneficial research initiatives.

“Researchers should know that they don’t need to go it alone or reinvent the wheel when building community research partnerships,” said AI/AN CTRP Director Jovanka Voyich-Kane. “CRAs know the landscape. They have a working roadmap, and they’re positioned to help researchers begin dialogues, solve problems collectively, and ensure the research is in the best interest of the community.”

In addition to being a resource for Montana-based communities and researchers, the hope is for the shared Core to serve as a model for other IDeA Program states.

“The AI/AN CTRP already partners closely with Alaska, and INBRE is looking at opportunities for our IDeA colleagues in New Mexico and Idaho to tap into CEC trainings and potentially develop their own CRAs,” said Montana INBRE Director, Brian Bothner. “The Montana model works, and we’d be thrilled to see parts of it adopted by other states with similar research opportunities and needs.”

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Modeling the Future In what turned out to be Montana INBRE’s largest-ever Café Scientifique audience, more than 150 people attended Tomas Gedeon’s talk on mathematical modeling.

omáš Gedeon isn’t one to be intimidated by unending cycles, tedious intervals, or testing the limits of his abilities. As an avid cyclist and cross country skier, Gedeon knows a thing or two about taking on oversized - some might call them monotonous - challenges of the repetitive sort. Coincidentally, the same could be said of his work life.

Gedeon, a professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences in the College of Letters and Science and an internationally recognized mathematician, specializes in mathematical modeling - the kind of math that involves taking colossal data sets and extracting digestible inferences from the noise. Here, too, one endures cycles, intervals, feedback loops, and long sequences of repetitive movement.

Fortunately for the rest of us, understanding the implications of Gedeon’s work isn’t nearly as challenging as actually doing it - a reprieve

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Tomas Gedeon | Photo courtesy of MSU Communications

The predictive power of mathematical modeling is of real consequence.

[Insights gained from mathematical modeling] are saving lives.

made all the easier by Gedeon’s charismatic way of weaving mathematics into the fabric of meaningful, relevant stories about the world.

Although mathematicians aren’t always guaranteed to draw standing-room-only crowds, Gedeon recently attracted Montana INBRE’s largest-ever Café Scientifique audience to date.

On a chilly evening towards the end of 2017, over 150 members of the Bozeman community - from middle school students to professors emeriti - gathered to listen, discuss and ask questions about math.

The title of Gedeon’s talk - “Malaria, Hurricanes, Climate and Eclipses: How scientists make sense

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of complex systems and make predictions about the future” - only hinted at the wide variety of topics Gedeon covered.

modeling’s predictive capacity might inform areas of public health in years to come.

Gedeon’s talk focused on how researchers like him use mathematical modeling to simulate and understand complex events taking place in the real world.

“The predictive power of mathematical modeling is of real consequence,” he said. “We’re at the point where mathematical modeling is helping to understand cell biology and mechanisms of gene regulation as well as lengthening warning windows for major storms, so these insights are saving lives.”

“Mathematical modeling helps make sense of complex systems that affect our lives,” he said.

“Years in advance, we can predict a solar eclipse to the minute, understand and control disease outbreaks like Ebola and predict future climate scenarios in better detail than ever before.”

But rather than viewing his work as an emergent property of modern computing capacity, Gedeon was careful to anchor mathematical modeling within a historical context.

“People throughout time were striving to develop the language and tools of mathematics and physics to describe and interact with the world,” he said. “This story goes back to the ancient Greeks and beyond, when people began using mathematics to describe the observable world and were able to use it to make successful predictions about the future.”

“There’s a reason why medical schools are requiring students to take more mathematics and statistics courses,” he added. “Doctors of the future will need to be more skilled in translating mathematical and statistical models into real-world diagnosis, interventions and care.”

A native of Slovakia, Gedeon received an undergraduate degree from Comenius University in Bratislava and earned a doctorate in mathematics from Georgia Institute of Technology.

At MSU since 1994, he served from 2012-2015 as a Letters and Science Distinguished Professor – the highest honor the MSU College of Letters and Science bestows upon a faculty member in the college.

What’s different now, says Gedeon, is that mathematicians have more data to work with and access to better computing power. As such, they can use math to approximate reality much more thoroughly and precisely than ever before.

Gedeon concluded the evening by discussing how mathematical Tomas Gedeon and Brian Bothner (Baxter Hotel Ballroom - Bozeman) Photos and text by Bill Stadwiser

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SOUTHWEST THE MAGAZINE

Seriously,

The Science of Spirits

where CAN’T you read about

Explore the fascinating worlds inside our everyday drinks.

MSU’s INBRE-Supported

Food and Health Lab?

he secret is officially out about Montana State University professors Selena Ahmed and Carmen Byker Shanks.

For years, many of their colleagues at MSU have watched Ahmed, an assistant professor of Sustainable Food Systems, and Byker Shanks, an associate professor of Food and Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems, quietly, methodically, and persistently churn out scholarly works at a quicker-than-average rate.

Selena Ahmed is using her botany Ph.D. for good: making tastier cocktails.

DECEMBER 2017

From Flathead Nation’s Char-Koosta News to Southwest Airlines’ in-flight magazine to the journal Nature to a United Nations Report: INBRE and CAIRHE Investigators Selena Ahmed and Carmen Byker Shanks are published everywhere these days.

Committee on Nutrition Report. The duo collectively presented over 30 research presentations and posters at international conferences in Spain, at the headquarters of the National Science Foundation, and, appropriately enough, at several backyard gatherings over food.

According to Ahmed, this expanded reach has been due to the pair’s focus on broader impacts and sharing their research in ways that can inform and benefit society at large.

But recently the pair’s reach – and that of the Food and Health Lab they codirect – seems to be extending beyond MSU, jetting past Montana’s borders, and reaching national and even international audiences.

We believe it is our responsibility as scientists and educators to share research findings as broadly as possible.

Just in the past year alone, they’ve combined to produce 14 published papers in peer-reviewed journals, five technical reports and general audience articles, and nine news and magazine stories. Ahmed was interviewed on Public Radio International’s Science Friday radio program in mid-March, and even had a policy piece featured prominently in a United Nations System Standing

“Ultimately our goal at the Food and Health Lab is to find solutions to complex food system problems to improve human and environmental wellbeing,” said Ahmed. “We believe it is our responsibility as scientists and educators to share research findings as broadly as possible with diverse audiences using various modalities,” she added.

DECEMBER 2017

To close out 2017, Ahmed’s picture landed on the cover of Southwest Airline’s December edition of Southwest the Magazine for a feature-piece titled, “The Science of Spirits,” – a lighthearted look at how the fields of agroecology, botany, chemistry, climatology, and bioengineering can enhance cocktail flavor. If this area of inquiry is something into which you’d care to do some, ahem, experimentation of your own, Ahmed is co-authoring an upcoming book, Botany at the Bar, which is due out later in 2018.

“Participating in the Southwest Airlines story was really fun, and getting scientific concepts published in an in-flight magazine was surprisingly fulfilling,” said Ahmed. “It is not an audience we typically interact with as scientists, and hopefully the magazine’s wide reach will gain more exposure for some of our other work on issues of food security, food access, food-waste reduction, and the linkages between food environments, nutrition, and health.”

Lest one get the impression from the informal Southwest story that the science 5

behind the Food and Health Lab lacks rigor, the duo’s recent peer-reviewed credentials also include publications like, Nature, Bioscience, Public Health Nutrition, Frontiers in Public Health, Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, Ecology and Evolution, Journal of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior, and Food Security.

“This year I was honored that the research article I published on food waste in the National School Lunch Program inspired the cover of the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics,” recalled Byker Shanks. “This article highlights that the examination of food waste in community settings provides researchers with a unique opportunity to study the quantity and types of nutrients that individuals consume and waste,” she added.

Closer to home, the Char-Koosta News – the official news publication of the Flathead Indian Nation in northwest Montana – recently highlighted the INBREsupported research partnership between the Food and Health Lab and Salish Kootenai College.

Photos: Montana INBRE & CAIRHE researchers Selena Ahmed and Carmen Byker Shanks in and around the Food and Health Lab at Montana State University.

Top: Ahmed and Byker Shanks catalog freezer samples.

Middle: Halloween superheros using the power of nutrition to promote health.

Bottom: Sharing a laugh over tea at the Food and Health Lab.

The Char-Koosta News article provided details on how Ahmed, Byker Shanks, and Salish Kootenai College faculty partners – including Virgil Dupuis, Mary Ann Running Crane, Mike Pierre, Mike Tryon, and Dawn Thomas – teamed up to address issues pertaining to dietary health on the Flathead Reservation. In particular, the Char-Koosta story highlighted how the team’s collaborative, community-based research methods created a stronger partnership that effectively involved local organizations and community support.

“We are delighted to see our project shared this way with the Flathead community,” said Ahmed about the Char-Koosta News article. “This collaborative food environment project to enhance dietary quality and health through increased fruit and vegetable consumption has been great first-hand experience of what can be accomplished when Montana tribal colleges, universities, and communities work Winter 2018

together to address food-system issues.”

Byker Shanks added, “We are very grateful that Montana INBRE has supported our collaborative project over multiple years.

This long term support has been key to

designing food-related community health projects and research that have been built from relationships at Salish Kootenai College and a diverse community advisory board over time.”

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Mine & Body Mining has always been Butte’s economic lifeblood. New Montana INBRE-supported research reveals that the mines might actually be in Butte residents’ blood, too.

IN THEIR VEINS he first thing to know about Butte, Montana, is that it’s a mining town.

Since the area’s original prospectors erected wooden sluices in the mid-1800s, digging ore has always been in the town’s blood. All told, Butte miners have liberated over two trillion pounds of silver, gold, and —especially— copper from nearby peaks and valleys. That’s enough copper to pave a four-lane, 440-mile highway four inches thick from Butte to Salt Lake City and beyond, if local lore is to be believed.

However you tally it, Butte is a town built on astonishing heaps of metal, money, and hard labor.

Although mining has always been Butte’s economic lifeblood, a new paper by Montana INBRE-investigator Katie Hailer has found that the mines might, quite literally, be in local residents’ blood, too.

Hailer, an biochemistry interested in environment

associate professor of at Montana Tech who’s metal accumulation in the and human bodies, has

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spent the past several years researching baseline metal accumulations in the Butte population. Her results were recently published in Environmental Toxicology and Pharmacology, and they contain some disquieting implications for human health.

More on that in a bit.

People in Butte are being exposed to a higher and potentially dangerous metal load compared to other locations.

RISK TAKERS The second thing to know about Butte is that its residents come from a long line of risk takers. Since its early days, Butte has enjoyed and suffered a rough-and-tumble, black-and-blue-collar reputation. Local history is rich with stories of territorial battles between wealthy “Copper King” mine owners and brutal labor conflicts that, on occasion, resulted in a high-profile murder or two.

Steering clear of divisive politics and labor battles apparently did little to guarantee one’s longevity, though; in 1917 a single fire engulfed Butte’s Granite Mountain and Speculator mines, eventually killing 168 workers. That fire alone bestowed Butte with the dubious distinction of being an arguably more dangerous place to live and work than the Western or Pacific Fronts of World War I.* Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising then that, despite these historical hazards of mine work and what modern science now tells us about the risks of prolonged ingestion or inhalation of certain metals, open-pit mining still occurs in close proximity to Butte.

The Continental Pit, an open-pit copper and molybdenum mine, opened east of town in 1986, and it is still churning out ore, dust, tailings, and slag today.

OPEN-PIT ERA A quick trip to the recent past will shed some light on why Hailer’s research is so unique and important. Butte’s era of openpit mining, a more mechanized form of deep mineral extraction, began in 1955 at the now infamous Berkeley Pit. By the time it closed in 1982, the Berkeley Pit was a mile long, a half mile wide, and a third of a mile deep. Open-pit mining in Butte produced 7

“I live in Butte, and I’m raising kids in Butte,” she said. “[People who live here are] all well aware of the fact that we’re surrounded by contamination, but I wanted to know more about what the actual risks were.”

As she read through the scientific literature looking for answers, she instead found gaps.

“I was surprised to learn early on that blood-lead levels were the only scientific tracking ever done in the human body in Butte,” she said. “There are a lot of reasons why lead is not the best metal to track when looking at mining contamination.

For starters, lead exposure can come from non-mining sources such as old paint or even leaded gasoline.”

Butte’s “original” copper mine -- now a tourist attraction.

large amounts of waste rock, including tailings impoundments, leach piles, and slag – most of which was contaminated with varying amounts of arsenic, lead, uranium, and other metals that scientists now know or strongly suspect are linked to health problems when ingested or inhaled.

Because of the astonishing flow of hazardous waste that open-pit mining activities released into nearby air, water and soil during the second half of the twentieth century, the United States Environmental Protection Agency designated the Berkeley Pit a Superfund site in 1983, essentially dubbing the area an environmental catastrophe and making it a high-priority, high-dollar remediation project. A decade later, the EPA doubled down and consolidated Butte, nearby Anaconda, and 120 miles of the Clark Fork River into a single Superfund complex, making it then and now the largest complex of its kind in the United States.

In its decision, the EPA identified several potential threats to human health from inhaling, ingesting or having direct contact with metal-contaminated soils, water, and air. Epidemiological studies conducted since suggest that Butte residents have experienced, at times, statistically higher cancer and neurodegenerative disease rates compared to the rest of Montana and United States. Research findings like these have even led the National Institute

We weren’t seeing much historic metal exposure, but rather what looked like current exposure.

That was really eye-opening and suggested that we needed to establish some broader baseline measurements. of Neurological Disorders and Stroke to label metal exposure as an environmental risk factor linked to neurodegenerative disorders like dementia.

Connecting the dots between the risks of metal exposure and on-the-ground health problems in Butte has been a long, laborious, and often challenging endeavor.

In doing so, all too often, scientists have had to play catch-up by studying historical emissions from mines long closed and looking into legacy health outcomes of people long since moved on or deceased.

Few studies, until now, have looked into the ongoing risks of toxic-metal exposure for current Butte residents.

METHODS To hear her tell it, Hailer first became interested in this metal exposure because Butte is home.

She added, “I was also surprised to learn that all this federal money has come in for environmental cleanup and remediation, but there weren’t any human studies of consequence to speak of.”

Not finding the answers she was looking for in the literature, Hailer decided to take matters into her own hands. The first step was conducting a pilot study examining metal exposure in people living near Butte.

While she initially expected to find strong links to historical contamination in the current population, she was surprised to find evidence that human exposure was actually ongoing.

“In the 2015 pilot study, we only looked at people who had lived in Butte for at least 10 years or more. We compared them to control populations, and what jumped out was that we weren’t seeing much historic metal exposure, but rather what looked like current exposure. That was really eye-opening and suggested that we needed to establish some broader baseline measurements in follow-up studies.”

On the surface, that follow-up study was deceptively simple. Hailer collected and analyzed hair and blood samples from Butte residents for hazardous metal content beyond just lead and then compared those results to a control population in nearby Bozeman – an analogous Montana town with no significant mining history.

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stood out to me the most,” said Hailer.

“Arsenic was present in all for sampling types in significantly elevated levels. I think that we should be paying a lot of attention to this.”

She added, “Manganese levels were also concerning to me. It’s a trace micronutrient, so our bodies need just a little, but ingest too much, and it becomes strongly correlated to Parkinson’s-like diseases.”

View from above: Butte sits directly next to historical and current open-pit mines. New Montana-INBRE supported research has found statistically elevated levels of toxic metals in the air and soil, as well as Butte residents’ hair and blood samples.

She also tested for recently introduced metal contamination by collecting air and soil samples from around Butte, measuring the level of toxic metals found in them, and then comparing those results to national averages.

What she found confirmed the suspicions raised in the pilot study.

“The quantity and type of metals that we saw in the air samples and the hair and blood samples confirmed that that exposure we were seeing wasn’t just from historic mining,” she said. “If it were all historic, we wouldn’t be seeing human exposure from particulate in the air. The exposure appeared to be current and ongoing.”

RESULTS Hailer’s data show that Butte residents are currently being exposed to significant levels of metals – some of which scientists know or strongly suspect have toxic effects in the body. They also established that the source of that exposure wasn’t just historical mining contamination but also ongoing exposure from a contemporary source.

Of particular note, the data show that Butte resident hair and blood samples contain statistically elevated levels of arsenic – a known carcinogen associated with skin, lung, bladder, kidney, and liver cancer.

“The results for arsenic and manganese Winter 2018

Hailer’s data also revealed elevated levels of aluminum, copper, cadmium, molybdenum, and uranium in Butte residents’ bodies. Soil samples from around Butte contained elevated levels of arsenic and copper, as well as detectable levels of lead, manganese, and cadmium.

Air sampling near the active mine concentrator revealed consistently higher arsenic and manganese particulate levels compared to average U.S. ambient air data.

“Some metals like copper and aluminum might not sound all that menacing because they’re so familiar, but their risk profile changes once they start to accumulate in the body,” she said.

Some metals like copper and aluminum might not sound all that menacing because they’re so familiar, but their risk profile changes once they start to accumulate in the body.

To be clear, Hailer’s study didn’t attempt to identify the source of the contaminants or to say for sure that the contamination is coming from current mining operations around the city.

“We don’t currently have enough samples to pinpoint the source due to Butte’s natural geology,” she said. “We’re just saying that people in Butte are being exposed to a higher and potentially dangerous metal load compared to other locations.”

So what exactly are the health risks for people who live adjacent to current open-pit mines like those near Butte? Are

Butte residents, because of exposure to contaminated air, soil and water at greater risk of, say, a cancer diagnosis than their doppelganger in a non-mining town? Do microscopic bits of metal suspended in air contribute to respiratory illness or other health problems in Butte? Will a child growing up in Butte today face a greater risk of, say, Parkinson’s or Parkinson’s-like diseases as an adult?

The answers to those questions are still up in the air, but Hailer cautions, “elevated metals in the body are associated with abnormal regulation of important body functions, which, in turn, can have negative impacts human health.”

In other words, while not conclusive evidence that ongoing exposure to toxic metals are guaranteed to degrade Butte residents’ health, her results show that there are plenty of reasons to be concerned and a pressing need to do more research.

“In order to more fully understand the dynamics between historic mining, current mining, and natural surface geology, we need to do more research,” Hailer concluded. “We need to collect more hair and blood samples from all segments of Butte’s population. We need more robust air sampling in more locations across all seasons. Also, scientists have barely begun to explore how complex interactions among different metals in a person’s system might affect overall biochemistry or health, so there’s really a lot left to be done.”

Read Hailer’s article, “Assessing human metal accumulations in an urban superfund site” online at: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S1382668917301485

FOOTNOTE *An estimated 0.13% of the pre-war US population suffered casualties due to WWI hostilities. Fewer still died from those casualties. Based on a 1917 population of no more than 60,000 people in what is today known as Silver Bow County, 168 deaths would have been approximately 0.28% of the local population.

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NEW CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE LITERATURE

Assessing human metal accumulations in an urban superfund site

Food supply: Blockchain could boost food security

Pathways to zoonotic spillover

Journal of Applied Communication Research

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Montana INBRE Investigator Co Carew awarded $40,000 Mellon Career Enhancement Fellowship ontana INBRE Investigator Co Carew was recently awarded a $40,000 Mellon Career Enhancement Fellowship by the American Indian College Fund.

The purpose of the Mellon Fellowship is to assist deserving tribal college and university (TCU) faculty in completing a dissertation or degree. In return, fellow recipients agree to remain faculty at a TCU for two years after degree completion.

Carew, who co-founded the Social Work Program at Salish Kootenai College and helped secure full accreditation from the Council of Social Work Education, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Expressive Arts Therapy from Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her proposed dissertation title is “Cultivating a Sense of Place through Indigenous Arts.”

Carew’s INBRE-funded research, titled, “Collecting Naratives of Hope through Group-Based Indigenous Art Experiences,” examines how personal stories of hope can act as psychological buffers against the development of destructive attitudes and behaviors, including hopelessness and suicide ideation.

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Co Carew

The ultimate goal of (my INBRE) project is to foster a sense of hope and for participants to become aware of their own personal strengths and the attributes of their ancestors.

According to Carew, the ultimate aim of her INBRE research “is to foster a sense of hope and for participants to become aware of their own personal strengths and the attributes of their ancestors.”

The American Indian College Fund aims to develop new leaders who are committed to furthering the tribal college movement, better position TCUs to offer advanced degrees, and increase retention of credentialed faculty with terminal degrees at the 35 American Indian Higher Education Consortium-member TCUs nationwide.

Parts of this story originally appeared in Flathead Nation’s Char-Koosta News: http://www.charkoosta. com/2017/2017_10_26/AICF_Co_Carew.html

Co Carew - Salish Kootenai College

Learn more about Co Carew’s INBRE research titled, “Collecting Narratives of Hope through Groupbased Indigenous Arts Experiences” online at: www.inbre.montana.edu/current-research/

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Student Success Story Maggie Russell

Magdalena (Maggie) Russell has received a 2017 Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier scholarship for undergraduates studying math, natural sciences and engineering. MSU photo by Kelly Gorham

Montana INBRE student receives prestigious Goldwater Scholarship aggie Russell, who is researching compounds that could be used to treat a neurodegenerative disease, has received the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, the nation’s premier scholarship for undergraduates studying math, natural sciences and engineering.

We recently caught up with Russell, who is majoring in cell biology and neuroscience with a minor in math at Montana State University, to ask her how Montana INBRE helped contribute to her success.

In what ways has the Montana INBRE program been most helpful or impactful to your academic & research experience at MSU? As with many students, I think it can be difficult to justify spending valuable time in a research lab without funding. Being part of the INBRE program allows students to do both – be involved with research and have a job. Had I not been able to receive funding, I would, no doubt, not have been able to devote as much time to my research Winter 2018

as I would have felt compelled to get a job.

In addition, the research skills which I have gained as part of this program have shaped my interests and future research goals.

Without my involvement in research, I would likely be on a very different path.

Other than providing funding, are there other ways in which INBRE has contributed to your success?

When I first became an INBRE student during the fall of my freshman year, I was very humbled and quite surprised that people at MSU who reviewed my proposal believed in me enough to support my research. Their vote of confidence has been instrumental in motivating me to continue doing my best in the lab.

As a result, I was very fortunate to work for 6 months at the Norwegian Stem Cell Institute. In order to make this happen, the INBRE program agreed to continue funding for my research work abroad.

Outside of lab results, what has research taught you? What sort of hopes and aspirations research-wise keep you motivated?

I have come to realize that research involves long periods of intense laboratory work, frequent disappointing results, and countless setbacks before achieving and understanding a result. While the day-to-day challenges of constructing experiments, collecting, and interpreting data are rewarding and exciting, most of what draws me to research is the very close connection between what we do at the lab bench and the patients that are afflicted with the disease we study.

I thought it was important to study abroad during my time at MSU. When I visited with my mentor, Frances Lefcort, about this, she suggested I go somewhere that I could continue to do research Learn more about Montana and offered to make contact with a INBRE Student Programs: colleague at the University of Oslo. www.inbre.montana.edu/student_programs.html 12

How has the mentorship you received from your INBRE mentor, Frances Lefcort, shaped your thinking and career trajectory at this point?

As an incoming freshman, I was introduced to Dr. Lefcort and was pleased to be invited to join her lab. From the first day I walked into her office, Dr. Lefcort has been welcoming, effervescent, and highly supportive of my research. When I first joined the lab, she paired me with a doctoral student mentor, Sarah Ohlen.

Both Frances and Sarah have served as mentors to me and have challenged me to stretch my limits. My hope is that, one day, I will be able to follow in their footsteps to become a research mentor and provide other aspiring scientists with a similar inspirational foundation.

Susan Higgins Community Research Associate Montana INBRE | CAIRHE

What should we expect down the road career-wise or discovery-wise?

That is a good question--one that I am still trying to figure out. My current goal is to either pursue a Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. in a field of neuroscience. I am very interested in the underlying mechanisms behind neurodegenerative disease and I hope to one day contribute to the development and discovery of new therapeutics for a variety of neurological disorders.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience with INBRE or your INBRE mentor?

I would like to acknowledge Dr. Ilse Mari Lee, the Dean of the MSU Honors College.

After meeting with her during my senior year of high school, I realized just how many opportunities MSU had to offer.

After considering many schools all over the country, I chose MSU largely due to what the Honors College had to offer. I recall emailing Dr. Lee the spring of my senior year to tell her that I would like to work in a research lab the summer before starting college She wrote me back right away with a list of people I should contact. Had Dr. Lee not been there, ready and willing, to suggest possible mentors for me, there is no doubt that my MSU path would have been much different.

Winter 2018

usan Higgins has joined Montana INBRE and the Center for American Indian and Rural Health Equity (CAIRHE) as a community research associate, part of both programs’ ongoing effort to build research relationships among rural communities in Montana.

Higgins will work closely with faculty investigators, facilitating their productive, trusting partnerships with local groups according to best practices in communitybased participatory research, said CAIRHE Director Alex Adams.

“Sue is a proven organizer and a catalyst for cooperative projects of any kind,” Adams said. “She will bring people together around the state to help our two programs develop and refine the research that Montana needs.”

By focusing on rural, non-tribal communities, Higgins will complement longtime CRA Emily Salois, who is a

respected adviser to faculty and tribal partners around the state. Together Salois and Higgins will strengthen the Community Engagement Core at a time of significant research growth at MSU, Adams said.

Higgins brings to the position a 35-year background in natural resources management and policy in Montana, including recent consulting work and eight years of program management with the Center for Large Landscape Conservation and The Tributary Fund, where she facilitated research activities, among other duties. She has authored guides for practitioners and educators, as well as a recent paper on best practices for research scientists working in faith and indigenous communities.

“I am honored to take on the work for CAIRHE and INBRE to connect their outstanding research capabilities to the real and vital on-the-ground healthcare needs of our rural Montana communities,” Higgins said. “Learning from communities about what makes science and research relevant to them, and bridging that story, is about the most exciting work we can do.”

Higgins will be based on the MSU campus in Bozeman, with frequent travel around the state. On her first day on the job in early November, she represented CAIRHE and INBRE at the 2017 Montana Healthy Communities Conference in Helena. She resides in Bozeman with her family.

Adapted from CAIRHE newesletter article originally written by James Burroughs.

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BULLETIN BOARD

Regional & National Events NMBIST Genome Editing Symposium March 15, 2018 Sante Fe, NM

On April 20th, MSU-Billings will host it’s fifth annual Research, Creativity, and Community Involvement Conference for undergraduate and graduate students of all majors to showcase their work. More details at:

Bioinformatics conference organized

by New Mexico INBRE. Limited number of Montana INBRE travel awards available. Inquire with the Montana INBRE office. Register at:

www.msubillings.edu/honors/Research_Conf.htm

www.nminbre.org MSU’s Annual Undergraduate Research Celebration will take place April 13 in the Strand Union Building’s Ballrooms. This event is free and open to the public. Details at:

www.montana.edu/usp/

Up next: MSU professors and co-directors of MSU’s Food & Health Lab, Selena Ahmed and Carmen Byker Shanks, will be discussing their research on food security, food access, food-waste reduction, and the linkages between food environments, nutrition, and health.

March 7th, 2018. Baxter hotel, downtown Bozeman.

www.inbre.montana.edu/cafe/index.html

Winter 2018

7th Biennial National IDeA Symposium of Biomedical Research Excellence (NISBRE) June 24-26, 2018 Washington, DC 7th Biennial National IDeA Symposium of Biomedical Research Excellence is a national scientific meeting to showcase the scientific and training accomplishments of the IDeA program of the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). The IDeA program develops scientific centers of excellence and trains biomedical scientists in the IDeA eligible states.

Save the date: additional details coming soon from Kansas INBRE

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P.O. Box 173500 AJM Johnson Hall #217 Montana State University Bozeman, MT 59717-3500 406-994-3360