Inside the Lombardi Lab By Donna Klinger
Patrick Lombardi, Ph.D.
THE SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCE AND MATHEMATICS (SNSM) is committed to ensuring that students are prepared not only to enter practice careers but also to advance into research careers and doctoral-level studies.
Lombardi says that the work of students in the Summer Research Internship Award program that SNSM has invested in was essential for his group to generate the materials and collect the data necessary for this grant application.
This focus on student success is especially evident in the Lombardi Lab. When Assistant Professor of Chemistry Patrick Lombardi, Ph.D., heard that his lab had received a $433,784 National Institutes of Health grant, he immediately shared the good news with students who have conducted research in his lab and whose work helped win the award. Lombardi’s successful grant proposal, to better understand how the cell’s DNA repair machinery is recruited to sites of DNA damage, included important preliminary data collected from a research group of Mount undergraduate students.
“In my three years at the Mount, I’ve noticed the tremendous positive effect that working in the laboratory over the summer has on our undergraduate researchers,” he observes. “By immersing themselves in the laboratory, students are able to master the experimental techniques that are necessary for their projects and become independent researchers. Given their proficiency in the laboratory, these students are then able to continue with their research during the academic year and can accumulate a significant body of work during their undergraduate careers. The laboratory skills and records of accomplishment garnered by these students make them strong candidates for external fellowships that enhance their scientific training even further.”
The grant provides students increased summer research opportunities to travel to scientific conferences to present their work and learn from others, and access to experimental approaches with state-of-the art laboratory equipment. 2 0
In the lab with (left to right) Hannah Orland, Lauren Gray, Patrick Lombardi and Walter Tate.
FEATURE SPRING 2021
Funds from the NIH grant will support six undergraduate
