Graduate student Jeanette Davis was awarded the National Science Foundation Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship. The Bridge to the Doctorate Fellowship award is given to someone who is a past or present participant in an LSAMP, AMP (Alliance for Minority Protection) or CAMP (College Assistance Migrant Program). The award provides funding for the first two years of graduate study, as well as academic year and summer research experiences, professional conference and research travel opportunities, monthly professional development seminars and networking opportunities. The program serves graduate students across a broad spectrum of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines.

Jeanette first came to UMBI as an undergraduate LMRCSC summer intern from Hampton University in 2007. During the intern program, Davis worked in Dr. Russell Hill's laboratory and later came to COMB for graduate school. She continues to work in Dr. Hill's laboratory where her work focuses on deriving pharmaceuticals from marine organisms.

Davis's Ph.D. project will entail travel to Hawaii to collect a sea slug-like creature -- the marine mollusc Elysia rufescens -- in whose wavy folds a hitchhiking bacterium can be found that yields a compound called kahalide F. The compound is of great interest because of its potential utility as a drug to fight cancer. Davis wants to collect samples and, with Dr. Hill, study the drug-producing bacterium, and optimize a way of producing the compound by growing the bacterium in culture and isolate new kahalalide-producing bacteria. Their two objectives are to make more kahalalide drugs available for cancer research, and also to protect the sea creature that harbor these compounds from being harvested to the point of extinction. The mollusc, as it happens, turns up on Hawaiian beaches only once a year, to spawn.

Jeanette first came to UMBI as an undergraduate LMRCSC summer intern from Hampton University in 2007. During the intern program, Davis worked in Dr. Russell Hill's laboratory and later came to COMB for graduate school. She continues to work in Dr. Hill's laboratory where her work focuses on deriving pharmaceuticals from marine organisms.

Davis's Ph.D. project will entail travel to Hawaii to collect a sea slug-like creature -- the marine mollusc Elysia rufescens -- in whose wavy folds a hitchhiking organism can be found that yields a compound called kahalide F. The compound is of great interest because of its potential utility as a drug to fight cancer. Davis wants to collect samples and, with Dr. Hill, isolate the drug-producing organism, and develop a way of manufacturing it in culture. Their two objectives are to make more of the drug available for cancer research, and also to protect the sea creature that harbors it from being harvested to the point of extinction. The mollusc, as it happens, turns up on Hawaiian beaches only once a year, to spawn.