Tammy Randall, an administrative specialist with the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences, has been named the 2025 Outstanding Classified Employee by the University of Maine Employees Advisory Council. 

The award recognizes classified employees’ exceptional service and dedication to 91¸ŁŔű, increasing the campus community’s awareness of the indispensable contributions that represented and nonrepresented classified employees make to the quality, diversity and overall mission of the university. Award winners receive $1,000 in recognition of their contributions. 

Randall has been a part of the 91¸ŁŔű community since 2016 when she joined the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences. She administers all of the financial accounts and research grants for the department and works individually with each faculty member to ensure that their accounts are up to date. 

Throughout all of the letters of nomination Randall received, her hard work and dedication were mentioned countless times. 

“Tammy’s dedication and work ethic are remarkable and have enabled our department to thrive in research, teaching and service. She provides timely, accurate and thorough management of the department’s finances and accounts, and demonstrates responsiveness, organization, efficiency and friendly support,” wrote one of her nominators

According to her nomination, the impact that Randall has had has been appreciated by the entire department. 

“We would truly not be able to function as a unit if it weren’t for her careful stewardship of departmental accounts and her tireless dedication to her position,” wrote another nominator. 

Siddhartha Bajracharya

Maine College of Engineering and Computing
Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering

Siddhartha Bajracharya of Kathmandu, Nepal, is the Outstanding Graduating International Student in the Maine College of Engineering and Computing. A computer engineering major, Bajracharya discovered his passion for embedded systems, a specialized computer system combining hardware and software, through high-altitude ballooning workshops at the University of Maine and Montana State University. He collaborated with students and faculty from institutions across the country to design sensors and launch high-altitude balloons. These experiences expanded his technical skills and helped him build a nationwide network of peers and mentors. He plans to continue his academic journey by pursuing a master’s degree in computer engineering at 91¸ŁŔű.

A full Q&A with Bajracharya is available online.

Morgan Bisecco

Maine Business School
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Finance with a Second Major in Management and a Minor in Economics

Morgan Bisecco from North Haven, Connecticut, is the Outstanding Graduating Student in the Maine Business School (MBS). She is majoring in business administration in finance with a second major in management and a minor in economics. She has been active in Beta Gamma Sigma and worked as an MBS ambassador and peer leader, as well as an undergraduate research assistant for the 91¸ŁŔű Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC), all while participating in clubs including celtic dance and figure skating. A summer internship at Aetna Healthcare leading into her senior year exposed her to soft business skills such as professional etiquette, teamwork and networking. In fall 2024, she further developed her skills in time management, communication and leadership by working as a teaching assistant in a 300-level management course. She plans to continue her education in the Graduate School of Business while also working at the ASCC.

A full Q&A with Bisecco is available online.

Elizabeth Brennan 

College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences | Honors College 
Bachelor of Science in Wildlife Ecology

Elizabeth Brennan of West Chester, Pennsylvania, is the Outstanding Graduating Student in the College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences. She is a wildlife ecology major and member of the Honors College, through which she wrote a thesis titled “Phenological changes in Arctic and Common Terns across Maine’s coastal islands.” While attending the University of Maine, Brennan monitored and collected data on island seabirds for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and performed abroad as a member of University Singers. After graduating, she plans to work as a shorebird steward in Massachusetts before pursuing her master’s in a wildlife-related field.

A full Q&A with Brennan is available online.

Daniela Chavez de Paz Solis

College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences | Honors College
Bachelor of Science in Biology with a Concentration in Pre-Medical Sciences

Daniela Chavez de Paz Solis of Lima, Peru, is the Outstanding Graduating International Student in the Honors College. She is majoring in biology with a concentration in pre-medical sciences. Chavez’s experiences have connected her passions for science and service, beginning with her efforts to establish a chapter of the Maine Red Cross on the University of Maine’s campus. Her call to become a physician-scientist was further informed by her research collaboration with the University of Miami that has demonstrated the inequities in patient outcomes. Her honors thesis titled, “The Role of Inflammatory Mechanisms in Muscle Fiber Regeneration of Zebrafish Affected by Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy,” combined her knowledge of muscular development and immunology. Having strived to surround herself with people who motivate and challenge her — in and outside of the laboratory — Chavez competed and traveled with the Women’s Club Volleyball team. After graduating in May, she plans to use gap years to strengthen her skills and prepare for medical school. 

A full Q&A with Chavez is available online.

Thomas Freel

Maine Business School
Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in Finance

Thomas Freel from Aberdeen, Scotland, is the Outstanding Graduating International Student for the Maine Business School. He is majoring in business administration in finance and is a member of the Men’s Ice Hockey team. His experience connected him with a group of fellow student athletes who motivated him and helped him grow as a teammate and person, as well as exposed him to situations that developed his skills in time management, group work and situational pressure. Through the university, he was also introduced to people and culture from all over the U.S. and experienced the unwavering commitment of 91¸ŁŔű hockey fans as his team claimed the Hockey East championship title in TD Garden in spring 2025 for the first time since 2004. Freel plans to continue playing hockey at 91¸ŁŔű while continuing his education at the Graduate School of Business. 

A full Q&A with Freel is available online.

Zachary J. Hopp

Maine College of Engineering and Computing
Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Mathematics

Zachary Hopp of Maple Grove, Minnesota, is the Outstanding Graduating Student in the Maine College of Engineering and Computing and the inaugural Chandrasekar Scholar. A mechanical engineering major with a minor in mathematics, Hopp is also a member of the Men’s Swimming and Diving team. He has gained valuable experience in materials science by completing three internships in commercial HVAC, architectural glass and industrial abrasive systems manufacturing, as well as by conducting research on sustainable superhydrophobic coatings for food packaging. In addition to his degree, he earned a Composite Materials and Structures Certificate as an undergraduate. His time at 91¸ŁŔű has been shaped by interdisciplinary collaboration and mentorship, inspiring him to pursue a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at Carnegie Mellon University to advance research in composite materials and polymers.

A full Q&A with Hopp is available online.

Amanda Ahava Karomba

Division of Lifelong Learning
Bachelor of University Studies with Minors in Interdisciplinary Disability Studies and Leadership Studies

Amanda Ahava Karomba of Lewiston, Maine, is the Outstanding Graduating Student in the Division of Lifelong Learning. She is majoring in university studies with minors in interdisciplinary disability studies and leadership studies. Karomba pursued her degree online while raising two boys and working as CEO of Happy Haven, an agency that provides direct support to adults with intellectual disabilities. 91¸ŁŔű offered Karomba, who is originally from Rwanda but raised in Maine, the flexibility to obtain a degree and allowed her to incorporate life and work experiences into her learning. After graduating, she plans to expand Happy Haven’s reach by offering a variety of services to underserved parts of the state, while mentoring and creating development opportunities for professionals like herself.

A full Q&A with Karomba is available online.

Lara Kirkby

College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences 
Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry

Lara Kirkby of Adelaide, South Australia, is the Outstanding Graduating International Student in the College of Earth, Life, and Health Sciences. A December 2024 graduate, Kirkby majored in biochemistry, researched in the Maginnis Lab and participated on the 91¸ŁŔű Women’s Soccer Team, through which she competed in and won two championships. After earning her bachelor’s degree a semester early, she joined the Adelaide United professional soccer team and is studying for medical school entrance exams.

A full Q&A with Kirkby is available online.

Alexandria Banou Morgan

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences | Honors College
Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with Minors in Neuroscience and Philosophy

Alexandria Banou Morgan of Perry, Maine, is a 2025 co-salutatorian and the outstanding graduating student in the Honors College and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She is majoring in psychology with minors in neuroscience and philosophy. Her journey at 91¸ŁŔű has been one of self discovery through scholarly pursuits and service. Morgan applied her research on identity, religion and prejudice to help others find where they belong and secured approximately $63,000 in funding for her undergraduate research.

A full Q&A with Morgan is available online.

Zachary Wentworth

College of Education and Human Development 
Bachelor of Science in Secondary Education

Zachary Wentworth of Calais, Maine, is the Outstanding Graduating Student in the College of Education and Human Development (COEHD). He is a secondary education major with a concentration in social studies and a minor in history. A Maine Top Scholar, a Maine Seacoast Mission scholar and a Galen Cole Family Foundation scholar, Wentworth served as president of the University of Maine chapter of the Student Maine Education Association for the past two years. He was also an undergraduate resident assistant with Residence Life, working with the communities in Hart Hall in the 2023-24 academic year and in Hancock Hall this year. Wentworth completed his student teaching placement at Orono High School with mentor teacher Shana Goodall, a two-time alumna of COEHD and the 2019 Maine History Teacher of the Year. After graduating, Wentworth plans to pursue a master’s in student development in higher education at 91¸ŁŔű, while working as a graduate assistant in COEHD’s Advising Center.

A full Q&A with Wentworth is available online.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

“Meg, Alex and Dom epitomize the value of a University of Maine education. Their positive attitudes, unrelenting work ethic and passionate research endeavors will push our distinguished alumni network even further ahead,” said 91¸ŁŔű President Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “Meg’s commitment to serving others manifested in the pursuit of both a liberal arts and health sciences education. Alex’s passion to understand that which sets us apart led her not only to presenting her research abroad, but also to personal discovery. Dom’s enthusiasm for microbiology is only outmatched by his desire to lend a helping hand. 

“They will be missed on our campus, but they can leave this community knowing it is a better place because of their investment in our student groups, collaboration in our research laboratories and mentorship to our rising first and second year students. Thank you, Meg, Alex and Dom, for pursuing your horizons to the fullest.” 

Caron is pursuing dual degrees in French and microbiology with a second science major in molecular and cellular biology. Alongside research, volunteer work, campus clubs and cooking competitions, she has been a member of the Field Hockey and Women’s Cross Country teams. She emphasizes the value of time and strives to spend every minute in the pursuit of happiness.

A full Q&A with Caron is online.

Morgan is majoring in psychology with minors in neuroscience and philosophy. Her journey at 91¸ŁŔű has been one of self discovery through scholarly pursuits and service. Morgan applied her research on identity, religion and prejudice to help others find where they belong and secured approximately $63,000 in funding for her undergraduate research.

A full Q&A with Morgan is online.

Needham is a microbiology major. His enthusiasm — drawn from a fascination in how invisible-to-the-eye pathogens can shape society — has remained steady and engaged through his education. In addition to his role as vice president and recycling coordinator for Partners for World Health, Needham is the president of the 91¸ŁŔű Health Professions Club.

A full Q&A with Needham is online.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

Caron participated in science fairs as a middle school student and conducted research projects every year through the Bangor High School STEM Academy. Her intellectual curiosity and desire to contribute to society continued at the University of Maine, where she pursued research as a Maine Top Scholar. In her first year, she received a Center for Undergraduate Research summer fellowship for her project investigating how fungal peptides affect the virulence of C. albicans and presented it with the fluency and confidence of an upper-class student.

As a rising senior, Caron was a summer research fellow at the University of Michigan’s Moenter Lab, then returned during her senior year where she now works as a laboratory assistant. She is studying how stress induces suppression of the reproductive axis. In high school, stress in Caron’s life led her to developing an eating disorder that, as a result, suppressed her menstrual cycle. Over four years, limited treatment options for the condition encouraged her to pursue her own research. Not only did it fuel her passion for women’s health, but it also taught her that perfection doesn’t equal happiness. After graduation, she plans to write a book about her experiences and publish it in 2026 after hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Caron’s pursuit of science and language education has enabled her to touch others’ lives in a meaningful way. She studied abroad in Nimes, France to research co-infections with the support of a Pioneer Award from Phi Kappa Phi, of which she is now the undergraduate student representative on the national board of directors. Her research in Nimes, and later in Montreal through the Killam Fellowships Program, doubled as a linguistic and cultural immersion. Inspired by her family’s French Canadian heritage, becoming bilingual was a way for Caron to expand the scope of people with whom she can form relationships. It’s the French word “éphémère” that she’s realized life to be, thus she has devoted her time to impact others through research, communication and the contagion of joy.

In addition to hiking the Appalachian Trail and finalizing her book, Caron plans to apply to MD-Ph.D. programs after she graduates and specialize in women’s reproductive health as a physician and clinical researcher. 

A few of the words people used to describe you were “self-driven,” “ambitious,” “upbeat” and “joyful.” How did you maintain such a positive attitude while balancing a dual degree, double major, volunteer work, exercise, sports and research?

I’ve always been an innately joyful person and recognize the contagious nature of both smiling and laughter. It’s a part of my personality that, despite any amount of adversity, will never fade. In fact, that part of myself has only been intensified throughout my laborious experience at 91¸ŁŔű. Amidst mountains of work, injuries, family loss and stress, I have come to realize how valuable time is, how fleeting life can be in general, and how four years can pass by in the blink of an eye. If there’s one thing I’ve resolved to do with this revelation, it is to be cheerful and spread as much joy to others as possible. 

The reason for this is because — like anything I do in life — I strive to find purpose, to find what motivates me to achieve. Ultimately, if life is what we call “ĂŠphĂŠmère” in French, which means temporary or short-lived, then I see no point in spending such valuable time unhappy. I find no fulfillment in doing things for the “sake of doing them,” whether for money, a resume booster or otherwise. If it does not bring me or someone else happiness, then I don’t feel that I’m contributing to what I see as the purpose of life. 

If you’ve ever asked yourself why people pursue careers in what they’re passionate about, your answer would probably be: “Because that’s what makes them happy.” Similarly, people are good at what they do when they’re passionate about it, when they find joy in it, and that is when they have the biggest impact on the world. Not only do I recognize this, but I’ve experienced it. I’ve listened to my heart and determined what brings me the most happiness, then pursued my dreams, centrally motivated by bringing and feeling joy, regardless of logic or order. You may look at my experiences at 91¸ŁŔű and be confused by the pursuit of three majors, a degree in science and one in french, two different D1 sports, research, work with the University Volunteer Ambulance Corps, study abroad endeavors, cooking competitions, marathons, etc., and ask “Why?” The truth is: there was no master plan in any of the madness, except for living life to its fullest and in essence, chasing happiness.

What motivated you to pursue challenging research in your first year?

In high school, I had always conducted a yearly research project through the STEM Academy. It is worth mentioning that even in middle school I participated in science fairs. These projects made obvious the contribution that research has to society. Once I arrived at 91¸ŁŔű, it simply felt wrong not to exercise this potential, especially since I would be funded through the Maine Top Scholars program to do research. After putting so much time and energy into research prior to undergrad, I felt a calling to continue it. It had already awarded me lifelong skills, connections and a full tuition scholarship. I knew I enjoyed it — I enjoyed pushing myself in general — and I knew that without it, part of my identity felt like it was missing. 

Can you describe the moment when you knew you wanted to focus on women’s health issues?

There are some events that happen in a perfect storm to markedly change your life. For me, I was hit by a wave in the latter part of high school that caused me to turn inwards. The pain I felt transformed into motivation, but I was unsure why or what to be motivated about. I put the majority of my drive into self-improvement. I pushed myself to the max in every corner of my life and, as a consequence, developed an eating disorder. This is something that I am now unafraid to share with the world and unashamed to speak about to increase its awareness. It is the biggest mountain I’ve had to overcome in all my 21 years and underlies my career aspirations today. As a consequence of striving not for happiness, but for perfection, I lost my menstrual cycle in high school. I loved sports, but my health was very quickly compromised by these combining factors. I was stubborn, determined and relentless in my efforts but scared and unwilling to accept help. DEXA scans repeatedly revealed my weakening bones, but the only treatment option I was offered for my amenorrhea was hormonal replacement, which served as a band-aid fix for the hormones that my body itself couldn’t produce. 

That is when I started doing my own research into the causes of amenorrhea, the basic science behind it and why treatments are so limited. Needless to say, in every opportunity I was given, I sought to further my knowledge of the reproductive axis and place myself in a position to advocate for its importance. After years of growth, acceptance and perseverance, I have clarity in my life of what is most important — that matters most is on the inside, not the outside. I plan to use this attitude to serve other women across the world, particularly in addressing reproductive dysfunction at the source, rather than masking its effects. Not only do I plan to write and publish a book in the coming year about my experiences, but I forever plan to conduct research on women’s reproductive health that will help inform treatment options for the patients I have as a future M.D. 

What has it been like to live in Michigan and work in the Moenter Lab? How were you able to pursue that opportunity?

To live in Michigan and, more specifically, work in the Moenter Lab, has been nothing short of a joy. I seized this opportunity after having conducted a quick search on the National Institutes of Health Reporter during my junior year to find labs across the U.S. that were doing research in my area of interest. I looked at projects with the key words: “gonadotropin-releasing hormone,” “kisspeptin” and “amenorrhea” to find exactly what I was looking for. I read their abstracts, found the contacts for their principal investigators and reached out directly by email explaining myself and my motivations to research in such a lab. 

Suzanne Moenter at the University of Michigan was one of the first to get back to me. She read my story, met me on Zoom and saw me in my entirety. She didn’t hesitate to give me a chance in her lab that summer, where I received money through the University of Michigan Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship to conduct research. It was the best research experience of my life. I was so passionate, and consequently, learned so quickly. I walked away knowing this type of research was what I was meant to do. 

That is why when she reached out to me again later this year, inquiring if I could come back to work in her lab, I couldn’t get there fast enough. It was a two week turn around from Montreal to Maine to Michigan. The move was crazy, as was coordinating a virtual French capstone through 91¸ŁŔű in my last semester, but there was no doubt in my mind that it was my calling. Working here now is beyond incredible; I’m in a space where everyone shares the same immense passion for the work they do, and I feel as if I’m truly living out the phrase “If you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life.” 

Language and science studies are relatively on opposite ends of the spectrum. Which would you say you enjoy more? 

There are many ways to touch someone’s life, and I find both avenues to be great ways to achieve that. With that said, words have underestimated power. The French language has always intrigued me because of my family’s French Canadian heritage. Once I started speaking it, I realized it’s just all around beautiful, and being bilingual expanded the population of people I could communicate with as well as the relationships I could form. I wouldn’t trade that for the world. While I enjoy the hands-on aspects of research, the never ending pursuit of knowledge, the excitement of scientific discovery and its real-world applications, language studies cross a certain barrier of intimacy, one that more-so addresses identity. When you speak to someone in their native language (leur langue maternelle), they express an appreciation that is so touching, I swear my heart grows three times in size. When English is the world’s dominant language, there’s a certain beauty in going out of your way to understand and communicate with people of another mother tongue. My studies in science will address human health in ways that language can’t, but the same can be said of the way language touches individuals’ hearts across the world, which is not otherwise achieved in the lab. 

In other words, I cannot choose! I strive to be happy and bring happiness to the lives of people around me, and my passions in both French and science have allowed me to do that.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

Leading into his senior year, Needham traveled to Senegal with 91¸ŁŔű’s Partners for World Health (PWH) chapter. A grant from Projects for Peace and 91¸ŁŔű’s Cohen Institute for Leadership & Public Service funded the trip for Needham and three other students. Over a week’s span, they helped 445 people from different parts of Senegal receive primary care from medical providers. They also helped interview and educate 200 pregnant women as an initiative by PWH to lower the infant and maternal mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa, an experience that brought a sense of reality to Needham’s research on group B streptococcus (GBS) — a leading cause of newborn infectious disease with high rates in Africa. 

A year of successive failures to create mutant strains of GBS taught Needham that research is more failure than success. Each failure was his motivation to try again with the determination that every next time would reveal the solution. He traces his skill and confidence in the laboratory back to “Phage Genome Discovery,” microbiology students’ first intensive research course. He returned as a teaching assistant during his junior and senior years and helped grow the skill and confidence of first-year students, like the course had done for him.

Needham’s honors thesis titled “Prophage-Driven Regulation of Nutrient Transport in Group B Streptococcus” was supported by the Maine INBRE Research Fellowship and Carolyn E. Reed Premedical Thesis Fellowship and presented at two 91¸ŁŔű Student Symposiums and two Maine Biological and Medical Sciences Symposiums.

In addition to his role as vice president and recycling coordinator for PWH, Needham is the president of the 91¸ŁŔű Health Professions Club, which he re-established during the COVID-19 pandemic to connect premedical students with each other and resources. He worked as a gross pathology intern at Dahl Chase Diagnostic Services between his sophomore and junior years. Since he was a rising sophomore, he has worked as an inpatient pharmacy tech at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, where he also volunteers his time through PWH.

Needham plans to specialize in infectious disease or pathology. He will take a gap year between graduation and medical school, and hopes to continue volunteering with organizations such as PWH. 

You’ve been described as someone who is engaged in the classroom environment, thoughtful and respectful toward helping other students. Why are these important to you?

I love learning about the field that I am in, which keeps me engaged. Microbiology is fascinating to me and has been for a long time. It’s cool that something we can’t even see can cause such massive effects — on an individual, how pathogens interact with their hosts to cause a diverse range of conditions, and on the population, how pathogens such as COVID-19 or the bubonic plague have shaped humanity. I feel like I learn about a new microbe every week and the weird things that it can do.

I also very much enjoy being a teaching assistant (TA) for the “Phage Genome Discovery” course. It was such an important and fundamental experience for me, and being able to potentially give that experience to another student is an amazing feeling. The phage course and the Molecular and Biomedical Sciences department — really 91¸ŁŔű as a whole — is great and unique in how students support each other. When you see students succeed in the class, get involved in other research and activities and become interested in the content, you know that you had a hand in making that happen.

Faculty in our department care about us and go above and beyond for their students. Knowing they care about my success motivates me even more. Dr. Edward Bernard, a professor I worked with as a TA in the phage course, walked around during one of the midterm exams to ask all the students their favorite pizza toppings. He was going to order pizza to congratulate and celebrate them for doing so well in the class. There are other amazing student-run organizations such as the Microbiology Club that build community between students. I also helped bring back the Health Professions Club to provide students, including myself, with resources and connections for their difficult pre health journey. 

What encouraged you to independently troubleshoot and pinpoint problems in your own research? — as opposed to asking for help.

A huge part of doing anything is knowing when to ask for help. Research is like 95% failure, which is why it can be so fun and motivating. You’re always working to fix protocols, improve assays, figure out why something that has worked for three years doesn’t anymore. Learning to deal with failure was super important for me. Research was one of the first times I faced something that I kept failing at. I tried for well over a year to create a single mutant strain of group B streptococcus (GBS). While I eventually did, it took an entire year of failure after failure after failure. It motivated me even more, and I worked hard to troubleshoot and to figure out what was going on, and I also turned toward my resources — the principal investigator in my lab, my graduate student mentor, my other lab mates and friends. A lot of the skills I practiced arose from the phage course, an introductory research-intensive class for first-year students. The experience of failure in research was super important as I learned how to accept it, deal with it and come back from it.

What is your motivation to volunteer?

In the words of Elizabeth McLellan, the founder and CEO of Partners for World Health (PWH), the first time we met: “Find something greater than your own self interest. When you commit to it, it will grow.” Those words have stuck with me the past few years. I’ve gotten to see and help 91¸ŁŔű’s chapter of PWH grow over the past few years, and it has helped me grow as a person. I’ve gained friends, connections and amazing experiences from volunteering. I get to explore hospitals, handle medical devices and equipment and meet medical providers and hospital/clinic staff. 

If volunteering isn’t an enjoyable experience and if it doesn’t motivate you, you just haven’t found the right thing to commit to yet. I love what I do, and that’s why I keep doing it. It’s also a way of giving back to the community that is helping raise you. A community is a two way street. I’ve gotten so much support from 91¸ŁŔű, my hometown, my family and my friends; volunteering is one way of paying that back.

What was most eye-opening about your trip to Senegal? 

PWH runs a program called Project 10,000, the goal of which is to lower infant and maternal mortality rates in sub-saharan Africa by providing sterile birthing supplies and education to 10,000 pregnant women. I helped interview and educate about 200 pregnant women to gather information for the providers, processed forms and assisted with vitals and assessments. Our group of student volunteers learned a lot from the providers, such as how to interact with patients with a language and cultural barrier through a translator, how to care for them, how to treat them with empathy and how to work with limited resources. People tend to think of these missions as dramatic, where doctors miraculously deliver babies or go and administer life saving medical treatment. Those things definitely happen, but from what I saw, it’s the simple human connections we build with people that make a world of difference. 

As I was wrapping up one of my first Project 10,000 interviews, I asked the pregnant woman, “Do you have any questions?” She immediately started crying, and I was terrified that I had said something wrong. I turned to the translator and asked what happened. Through tears, the woman told the translator and the translator said to me: “She is crying from happiness because she has never been asked that question before.” 

Our group got to see the work we do in Orono in action in Senegal. Our chapter sorts medical supplies and ships them to Portland. Providing pregnant women with such supplies in Senegal, some of which could have passed through our hands in Orono, revealed the full picture and the impact of what we do back home. It turned statistics into real faces and created a sense of connection. When you put a face to the numbers for maternal and infant mortality rates and learn their names, their children’s names and their occupations, it becomes much more real. It also connected to my work with GBS, a leading cause of newborn infectious disease. Africa especially has some of the highest rates. GBS lives asymptomatically in about 1:5 women and can infect the infant in utero or during labor, potentially causing severe disease.

What impact did the Senegal trip have on your career ambitions?

One of the main things I will take away from the trip is the amazing impact that a physician can have on a community. There were so many rural Senegalese patients with conditions that were untreated or poorly managed, because they had no idea what was wrong with themselves. Even if they were somehow able to see a doctor, they were not given the time and care to help understand their conditions. Many people came in with severe hypertension, because they didn’t have access to blood pressure monitoring devices or thought hypertension medications were temporary like antibiotics.

People joke that medical students and physicians get weird questions from their friends and

family, but it’s because of trust and the desire to understand their health. A primary care patient that I saw in Senegal while shadowing a physician had a condition that was most likely caused by his hypertension medication. The patient was grateful that the physician was able to explain the condition to him and why it was happening. He returned with a hand sewn dress that he had made to express his gratitude to the physician. Physicians are here to support, educate, help people and get them back to a healthy state, so they can enjoy life and, in this case, follow their passion of sewing beautiful clothing.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

Gayle Kraus, professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias, and Melissa Maginnis, associate professor of microbiology, received Presidential Outstanding Teaching awards. Nick Giudice, professor of spatial computing and VEMI Lab founder and chief research scientist, received the Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award. Ryder Scott, executive director of 91¸ŁŔű 4-H Centers, received the Presidential Public Engagement Achievement Award. Brian Beal, professor of marine ecology at 91¸ŁŔű Machias and director of the Marine Science Field Station, received the Presidential Innovation Award. Jake Ward, vice president of strategic partnerships, innovation, resources and engagement, received the Black Bear Award for Extraordinary Impact. 

“These equally dedicated and accomplished faculty and staff exemplify how the University of Maine and the University of Maine at Machias have been essential to the advancement of our learners and our state,” said 91¸ŁŔű and 91¸ŁŔű Machias President Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “Gayle has taught two generations of students how to observe the world with an open mind, a kind heart and a creative eye — always with a lens for science. Melissa brings her nationally recognized expertise in the field of virology directly into her classroom, where student-led research lays the groundwork for this country’s next biomedical scientists. Through his determination to better the lives of millions who are blind and low vision, like himself, Nick pioneered innovative technologies and established new techniques for people to receive and process information. Ryder extended his enthusiasm for Maine’s beautiful outdoors, from the coast to the forested hillsides, to all of its youth by developing engaging outdoor education. Brian has expanded the state’s blue economy by collaborating in the development of not one, but two, shellfish hatcheries in Downeast. Jake has lended a strong hand to Maine’s heritage industries by establishing connections that benefit our economy and our students. 

“This year’s Presidential Award recipients honor both our campuses and the many communities they serve,” Ferrini-Mundy said. “I personally want to thank them for their contributions to our students, graduates and Mainers at large, and look forward to seeing what they achieve next.”

Gayle Kraus

Throughout Kraus’s 44 years of teaching marine biology courses, her love for it has never waned. She is just as excited about teaching today as she was at the beginning of her career. She has changed the lives of many, not only in the classroom, but also as an adviser and mentor.

Kraus significantly enhances her students’ educational experiences by designing coursework that gives them an opportunity to be on the sea and along the coast. Her use of immersive field experiences deepen student understanding by connecting classroom learning to real-world application. With an expertise that spans the topics of ichthyology, marine biology, marine mammals, invertebrates, ornithology, skeletal articulation and wildlife rehabilitation, Kraus has a personal way of connecting those around her with knowledge. She teaches others to imagine the world as she does: through the eyes of the subject, whether that be a New Zealand abalone shell or a harbor seal.

During the fall, spring and summer, Kraus works with students to create and maintain the aquaculture laboratory, where they are tasked with nurturing a healthy ecosystem in fish tanks, and the campus labyrinths, which are creative pathways for people to explore made of logs, flowers and other natural elements. For over two decades, she and her students have participated in the Marine Mammal Stranding Network to collect and assess data on the carcasses of marine animals such as seals, sharks and whales, as well as rescue and perform basic triage on a variety of seal species. She also helps students set up research aquariums for culturing corals, a skill needed to restore reefs that provide habitats for endangered marine species.

Throughout her career, Kraus’s research on marine ecosystems — from soft shell clams to macrobenthic organisms — has been included in over a dozen abstracts and publications.

Her advice to future teachers is to not be afraid of extending beyond the comfort zone and learn along with students, which is when Kraus said the adventures start. She strives to keep her courses experiential, ever changing and relevant so that her students are always entertained.

Kraus was recognized by Commissioner Judy Camuso of the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife in 2021 for her volunteer work to stabilize and rehabilitate injured birds and mammals. She has been a Maine state permitted wildlife rehabilitator for approximately 30 years and participates annually in the Audubon Christmas Bird Count.

Melissa Maginnis

Maginnis has dedicated her career to understanding the complexities of viral disease and training the next generation of biomedical scientists. As associate professor of microbiology, Maginnis leads both undergraduate and graduate students in research and learning and has mentored and advised students through the Maine Top Scholars program and Health Professions Advisory Committee.

Maginnis joined the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences in 2014 and has established herself as an expert in the field of virology. She leveraged her talents to help Maine’s public universities navigate the COVID-19 pandemic as the scientific lead for the University of Maine System Science Advisory Board. Her work earned her recognition through national media appearances, including on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and in The Wall Street Journal.

As co-chair of the American Society for Virology (ASV) Education and Career Development Committee, Maginnis collaboratively led the creation of the first ever curriculum guidelines for undergraduate and graduate virology education. She applied that knowledge at 91¸ŁŔű by redesigning an upper level virology course, designing a new course for graduate students and developing a research intensive virology course for undergraduates. The latter was selected as one of the first Advanced Research Learning Experience courses as part of UMS TRANSFORMS, a program funded through generous support from the Harold Alfond Foundation.

Maginnis’s breadth as an educator is exemplified through her ability to teach both advanced and beginner courses, such as the widely popular “Phage Genome Discovery” course for first-year students. Despite the challenging nature of her subject matter, students find Maginnis’s classes to be fun and interactive as she promotes student agency and teaches them the values of thinking critically and self critiquing their own work.

In addition to the more than $3 million in grant funding she has secured from sources including the National Institutes of Health, her mentorship has helped students secure funding for their own research proposals. She has trained over 30 undergraduate students, eight Ph.D. students and three master’s students and has served on more than 60 thesis committees.  

Maginnis reaches prospective students by serving on the Office of Major Scholarships Advisory Council and at the Maine State Science Fair as a scholarship judge. She is the faculty advisor for Undergraduate Women in STEMM and partners with the women’s soccer head coach, Scott Atherley, to support the recruitment of female student athletes.

She received the 2024 Graduate Faculty Mentor Award and the 2018 Graduate Mentor Award from the Graduate Student Government; the 2024 Mel McClure Global Community Impact Award from the Office of International Programs; and the 2022 Faculty Mentor Impact Award from the Office of the Vice President for Research.

Nicholas A. Giudice

For Giudice, research impact and translation are paramount. Since joining 91¸ŁŔű in 2008, he has focused his work on improving the independence and quality of life for millions of people worldwide who are blind and low vision (BLV), including older adults, as vision loss is predominantly age related. Giudice himself is congenitally blind and has pioneered tools, technologies and techniques to promote information access for BLV individuals in multiple disciplines including spatial cognition, transportation and STEM education.

Giudice is a professor of spatial computing in the School of Computing and Information Science and the chief research scientist of 91¸ŁŔű’s Virtual Environment and Multimodal Interaction (VEMI) Laboratory. He founded and has developed the VEMI Lab, alongside its director Rick Corey, to a multidisciplinary and student-driven research hub home to a first-of-its-kind full motion, multi-person autonomous vehicle simulator used to study human-vehicle collaboration.

Giudice’s research program combines approaches from experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience and human-computer interaction to study how the brain fuses spatial information from multiple senses — audition, language, touch and vision — to support spatial learning and behavior. His work has motivated new theories about how nonvisual and multisensory information is represented in the brain and led to the development of universally designed multisensory tools that support graphical access, navigation and autonomous transportation.

Giudice’s research group also has established multisensory techniques to promote human-vehicle collaboration with autonomous vehicles, aiming to make the human-AI interactions needed for this emerging form of transportation universally accessible and intuitive. This groundbreaking research led to a U.S. Department of Transportation design award and an invitation to visit the White House in 2022.

Giudice has authored or co-authored more than 150 scientific publications relating to the study and design of multisensory information access technology. He has also been the principal investigator or co-principal investigator on more than $17 million in research grants and awards from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Transportation. He frequently collaborates with industry partners on research to support universal design. 

Giudice has served on the program committees of dozens of scientific conferences and workshops and the scientific advisory boards of two information access companies. He sits on the Board of Directors of The Iris Network, a nonprofit that serves the BLV community. In 2017, he co-founded Unar Labs LLC, a Maine-based start-up company pioneering information access technologies.

Giudice received the 2023 Outstanding Faculty Award for Research and Creative Achievement from 91¸ŁŔű’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and 91¸ŁŔű’s 2019 Faculty Mentor Impact Award.

Ryder Scott

Scott has dedicated his professional career to the growth and development of Maine’s youth. Scott joined University of Maine Cooperative Extension in 2007 as the program director for the 91¸ŁŔű 4-H Camp & Learning Center at Bryant Pond. Today, he provides statewide leadership as the executive director of the 4-H Learning Centers, which include Blueberry Cove, Tanglewood, Greenland Point and Bryant Pond. He plays a pivotal role in transforming outdoor education and youth development across the state. 

Under Scott’s leadership, these 4-H sites have evolved from summer camps to year-round learning centers that prioritize experiential education, foster a deep connection with the natural world and help young people reach their fullest potential. Through the year-round program offerings at the 4-H Centers, thousands of young people have gained invaluable skills in leadership, conservation and stewardship. In an era when technology can lead to a “nature deficit” in youth, Scott and the programs he leads ensure that students have an opportunity to engage in immersive outdoor experiences that promote problem-solving, teamwork and personal growth. 

A defining characteristic of Scott’s work is his conviction to the idea that exposing youth to experiential learning opportunities in the outdoors is essential and should be universally accessible. Through scholarship programs, community partnerships and innovative programming, he has worked to ensure that children from all of Maine’s communities have the opportunity to experience the benefits of outdoor learning. In service of this goal, Scott has cultivated strong collaborations with educators, nonprofit organizations, state agencies, philanthropic entities and policymakers. 

He was instrumental in creating the Telstar Freshman Academy, a partnership between MSAD 44 and the Bryant Pond 4-H Center. This unique approach to high school education at the Bryant Pond 4-H Center combines interdisciplinary, project-based curriculum with best practices in experiential and outdoor learning to create a vibrant, engaging environment for all district ninth graders. 

Scott also helped launch the NorthStar 4-H Youth Mentoring program in Oxford County. Through long-term mentorship support from adults, the program aims to raise college and career aspirations for youth from rural Maine communities. Since its inception in 2017, the program has expanded beyond its pilot site to two additional school districts serving hundreds of youth.

As a recognized leader in outdoor education across the state, Scott has been instrumental in building a coalition of outdoor education organizations to form the Maine Outdoor School for All initiative. This effort aims to provide every middle schooler in the state with a formative overnight experience at an outdoor learning center with their classmates. These efforts by Scott and his team have generated millions of dollars of external funding and have developed into program innovations that are having widespread impact for Maine youth.

Brian Beal

Beal (’79 UMM, ’94G 91¸ŁŔű) has spent four decades improving the economic impact and relevance of Maine’s coastal communities. Beal’s methods for cultivating commercial shellfish have helped Maine’s blue economy adapt to the impact of changes in the Gulf of Maine.

He contributed to the rise of the Downeast Institute for Applied Marine Research and Education from its position as a local shellfish hatchery to the easternmost marine research and education center in the U.S. Formerly known as the Beals Island Regional Shellfish Hatchery, the Downeast Institute started as a six-town affair in the basement of a retired elementary school. Within a decade, involvement in the facility grew to 72 communities. Beal, director of the Marine Science Field Station at the Institute, further expanded its scope by introducing research on scallops, mussels and oysters.

A professor of marine ecology, Beal splits his time between teaching at the 91¸ŁŔű Machias and conducting research. Each year since 1987, he selects two or more undergraduate students to participate in 12-14 week internships at the Downeast Institute. He also guides students who conduct marine biology or ecology studies as part of their Senior Thesis in Biological Research course. 

Beal was instrumental in establishing Maine’s first lobster hatchery in the late ‘80s. At the request of a group of lobstermen from Cutler, Beal collaborated with 91¸ŁŔű’s Darling Marine Center to enhance lobster stocks. The Cutler Lobster Hatchery became obsolete in the ‘90s when lobster reproduction exploded from warmer waters in the Gulf of Maine. Around the same time, the director of the Shellfish Research Laboratory at the National University of Ireland, Galway, invited Beal to demonstrate his method of rearing lobster. His technique is now used in European and Canadian facilities for research and lobster stock enhancement.

Beal is a member of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection Clean-up and Response Fund Review Board and the Downeast Institute Board of Directors, and is chairman of the Maine Aquaculture Innovation Center Board of Directors. He received the 2000 91¸ŁŔű Machias Teacher of the Year Award and the 2015 Bourne-Chew Award from the National Shellfisheries Association, of which he is also a member. Additionally, he was recognized as a 2001 91¸ŁŔű Machias Distinguished Alumnus and was included in Maine Magazine’s list of 50 Mainers creating a brighter future for the state in 2019.

James S. “Jake” Ward IV

Jake views 91¸ŁŔű’s service commitment to the state through a tripartite lens: kids, companies and communities. 

That three-word phrase has become a mantra for Jake, who strives to ensure that each group benefits maximally from all that 91¸ŁŔű has to offer as the vice president of strategic partnerships, innovation, resources and engagement. For nearly 35 years, he has advocated for innovation and collaboration, working to translate 91¸ŁŔű research and development into economic opportunity for Maine’s youth, companies and communities, present and future. His visionary leadership and strategic policy work have resulted in major research and innovation  investments for 91¸ŁŔű and stimulated the growth of the state’s innovation ecosystem and overall economy. 

Jake joined 91¸ŁŔű in 1990 as coordinator of the Maine Inventor’s Network, where he supported hundreds of inventors — from backyard innovators to university researchers — with navigating patents, funding and commercialization pathways. Later, as the director of 91¸ŁŔű’s Department of Industrial Cooperation, Jake formalized and expanded 91¸ŁŔű’s technology transfer, industry collaboration and economic development efforts, bridging the gap between university research and private-sector needs. 

Jake’s work to bring early stage innovations in composites, aquaculture and environmental engineering to market helped establish 91¸ŁŔű as an authority in these sectors. Ongoing efforts have cemented the university’s leadership and resulted in major investments from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Economic Development Administration, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Department of Defense, among others. 

A skilled strategist and coalition builder, Jake has played a pivotal role in shaping Maine’s research and development policy landscape. His advocacy and collaboration with lawmakers led to the establishment of the Maine Economic Improvement Fund and the Maine Technology Institute, both of which provide critical, ongoing support for research that drives economic growth. He was also instrumental in securing 91¸ŁŔű’s early National Science Foundation EPSCoR grants that led to the development of transformative research centers, including the Advanced Structures and Composites Center and the Aquaculture Research Institute.

Throughout his career, Jake has worked across disciplines at 91¸ŁŔű to fill the gap between university expertise and Maine’s real-world challenges, from the innovation and diversification of heritage industries to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. He is a champion of hands-on learning and workforce development opportunities for Maine’s youth, ensuring they have the skills to continue growing Maine’s emerging industries. He has also supported the resilience and growth of Maine’s communities through university research collaboration, such as Maine’s Forest Opportunity Roadmap (FOR/Maine) and the Outdoor Recreation Economy Roadmap.

Contact: Ashley Yates; ashley.depew@maine.edu

MDI Biological Laboratory recently announced a $19.4 million federal award that will propel INBRE into its next five years of success. Led by MDI Bio Lab, the network provides training, research experiences and financial support to help young Mainers play a bigger role in today’s biomedical revolution, qualifying them for careers in a high-paying field that is making rapid advances in human health.

Formally announced by Senator Susan Collins (R-ME) in a celebratory event on Tuesday, Aug. 13Ěý at MDI Bio Lab, the award was made by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). It renews the network’s funding for five years, while enlarging its scope to a total of 17 institutions.

Ěý“In a state like Maine with a small population and a vast geography, it’s our willingness to work together that makes us competitive in the global biomedical world, that helps us to punch above our weight,” said Hermann Haller, MDI Bio Lab’s president. “The Maine INBRE is our connective tissue, an extraordinarily collaborative network that is significantly raising the biomedical research and training capacity of the entire state.”Ěý

ĚýThe Maine INBRE:Ěý

• supports early-career bioscience faculty in Maine with research grants, staff, lab equipment and other resources they need to compete for larger federal grants. More than 60 faculty have been supported by the INBRE;

• has provided more than 2,800 college students with genuine biomedical research experiences and access to state-of-the-art equipment through intensive courses, workshops and paid fellowships, transforming their goals and helping to build a technically skilled biomedical workforce for Maine;

• invests in shared, state-of-the-art science infrastructure at participating institutions, from advanced gene editing and data science systems to leading-edge 3D microscopy, building the state’s overall research capacity and standing as a home for world-class science.

“You don’t need to be in Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, or Boston to make a difference. Remarkable research is taking place right here in Maine,” said Collins. “The Maine INBRE is helping to make it possible.”

New network members include the University of Southern Maine, the MaineHealth Institute for Research, and the University of Maine at Augusta. It already includes the University of Maine, 91¸ŁŔű Honors College, 91¸ŁŔű system campuses in Fort Kent, Presque Isle, Farmington, Machias, Southern Maine Community College, College of the Atlantic, the University of New England, Colby, Bates and Bowdoin colleges, The Jackson Laboratory and MDI Bio Lab.

The program so far has directly invested $87+ million in Maine, with early-career faculty it’s supported winning $100+ million more in other research grants. 90% of INBRE undergraduates have gone on to pursue higher education and careers in health-related fields, and 21% stayed in Maine to do so. Over the last five years, the number of science majors at participating schools has increased by 65%.

Contact: Fred Bever, fbever@mdibl.org

Robert T. Wheeler, a professor of microbiology at the University of Maine, testified May 14 as an expert witness at a hearing sponsored by U.S. Sen. Angus King and the American Society for Microbiology as Congress considers ongoing funding for the National Wastewater Surveillance System. 

Wheeler was part of an interdisciplinary team that leveraged its expertise to help 91¸ŁŔű and the System respond to the challenges presented by SARS-COV-2. He created and led a COVID-19 monitoring initiative at 91¸ŁŔű that tested wastewater to predict outbreaks on campus and in the town of Orono. The approach was far more affordable and less demanding than testing the entire campus population every week, scaling well from small municipal water districts like the one for Orono to large metropolitan areas. 

“Developing and implementing a systemwide testing program was possible even on a limited budget, and gave us a twice weekly reading on COVID levels at our campuses,” Wheeler said in his prepared testimony.

Wheeler highlighted the benefits of wastewater testing in a state like Maine, where a spread out population and limited resources make directly testing a representative sample of the community unfeasible. Maintaining networks established through the National Wastewater Surveillance System during the COVID-19 pandemic will facilitate faster responses to future disease outbreaks and support further improvements to wastewater surveillance, Wheeler said. 

“This national system is incredibly useful, but it took a lot of time, coordination and effort to put together our national wastewater surveillance system. So it makes sense to keep it running and ready for the next pandemic — whether it is Ebola, swine flu or something none of us have even heard of yet. It has already been repurposed to identify potentially dangerous pockets of bird flu, providing rapid data nationwide on the risks of this potentially dangerous new form of influenza.”

When he is not wielding his laboratory acumen to combat a pandemic, Wheeler studies the primordial war between pathogens and their hosts to understand how these interactions influence disease and treatment. In the long term, Wheeler expects his research will identify new means to prevent and treat fatal fungal infections in immunocompromised patients. 

Wheeler’s remarks continue a long tradition of experts from Maine’s R1 research university informing the work of Congress. In August, University of Maine President Joan Ferrini-Mundy made remarks at a listening session of the U.S. House Committee on Agriculture about priorities for the 2023 Farm Bill. 

In a formal written testimony to the committee, Ferrini-Mundy, who also serves as the UMS vice chancellor for research and innovation, detailed the importance of investments in land grant education, research and service to the success of Maine and the nation. 

“Perhaps nowhere is the success of agriculture and dependent rural communities more intertwined with the activities and capacity of a land grant university than here in Maine with our flagship university,” she wrote. 

In 2022, Rachel Schattman, a 91¸ŁŔű assistant professor of sustainable agriculture, served as an expert witness at a Congressional hearing about how farmers can mitigate and adapt to climate change. The university’s liaison to the forest products industry, Shane O’Neill, testified about workforce development and innovation in that sector at the invitation of the U.S. House Agriculture Committee’s Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee that same year.

Erin Miller: erin.miller@maine.edu 

91¸ŁŔű has received a $11.3 million Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE) award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support interdisciplinary biomedical research.

The COBRE award will focus on research about the mechanisms that regulate cellular behavior in response to cues from outside the cells, from the impact of persistent viral infections on cell systems to the mechanisms that lead to muscle cell development. The research has the potential to inform future treatment of infectious diseases, neuromuscular disorders and muscle aging and regeneration. 

“91¸ŁŔű is the only institution in the state that grants doctoral degrees in biomedical science and biomedical engineering through its Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering,” says Kody Varahramyan, vice president for research and dean of the 91¸ŁŔű Graduate School. “This COBRE, which will be 91¸ŁŔű’s first, will transform 91¸ŁŔű’s ability to serve as the academic leader for biomedical research in Maine and feed the growing biomedical research industry in Maine. This research will elucidate basic biological mechanisms underlying cell behavior and also has the potential to inform the future treatment of infectious diseases, neuromuscular disorders, and muscle aging and regeneration.”

The COBRE award is led by Clarissa Henry, professor of biological sciences in the School of Biology and Ecology and director of the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering at 91¸ŁŔű.

“This award will transform the landscape of biomedical research at the University of Maine and foster innovation in the life sciences statewide,” Henry says.

It will primarily support five research projects led by early career investigators from 91¸ŁŔű and the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, including 91¸ŁŔű’s Melissa Maginnis, Jared Talbot, Joshua Kelley and Ben King, as well as at the MDI Bio Lab. 

“The MDI Biological Laboratory is very pleased to collaborate on this Maine-based research initiative,” says MDI Bio Lab President Herman Haller. “Romain Madelaine’s work on the cellular mechanisms of muscle regeneration holds great promise for improving the way we age. The COBRE award will accelerate his discoveries and more by university faculty and students.”

As program director for the COBRE award, Henry will mentor the research team as they develop their projects. 

The award also aims to bolster 91¸ŁŔű’s ability to serve as the academic leader for biomedical research in the state and feed its growing biomedical research industry through the Institute of Medicine and College of Natural Sciences, Forestry, and Agriculture. For example, this award will support the creation of a Microscopy and Image Analysis Core headed by Rob Wheeler, associate professor of microbiology, that will provide access to super-resolution confocal microscopy and support unbiased image analysis.

The award will also support burgeoning biomedical researchers through assistantships in the Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering (GSBSE). Currently, 91¸ŁŔű is the only institution in the state that grants doctoral degrees in biomedical science and biomedical engineering.

“One of the most exciting aspects of this grant is the explicit integration of research with training of the next generation of biomedical scientists,” says Henry. “91¸ŁŔű has a phenomenal cluster of early career biomedical faculty and I am thrilled that this award will propel their research careers, increase campus and statewide collaboration, and add meaningful undergraduate and graduate research experiences.” 

The award starts April 5, 2023.

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu 

For more information and to register, visit the event webpage.

Session chairs include Parker Gassett, Climate Resilience Coordinator, Maine Climate Science Information Exchange, Maine Sea Grant, for the session Applied Research to Advance Coastal Climate Resilience; Andres Urcuqui-Bustamante, Ph.D. student at the School of Forest Resources, for the session Protecting Key Ecosystems through Integrated Pest Management in Maine; Sharon Klein, professor at the School of Economics and Mitchell Center Faculty Fellow, for the session Maine Community Resilience Partnership: Supporting Local Climate and Energy Action; and Caroline Noblet, associate professor at the School of Economics, and masters student Charity Zimmerman for the session Voices of the PFAS Issue in Maine.

Session presenters include Jessica Reilly-Moman, former Ph.D. student at the Darling Marine Center; Sean M.C. Smith, associate professor at the Earth and Climate Sciences andĚý Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions; Mark Jordan, Ph.D. student at the School of Earth and Climate Sciences; Julie Gosse, associate professor of biochemistry; Andrei Alyokhin, professor of applied entomology; Stephanie Hurd, Ph.D. student in ecology and environment sciences; Regina Smith, program manager at the Cooperative Forestry Research Unit; David Handley, vegetable and small fruit specialist at 91¸ŁŔű Extension; Alex Scearce, masters student of plant, soils and environmental science; Erin Percival Carter, assistant professor of marketing at the Maine Business School; and Kathleen Bell, professor at the School of Economics.

Undergraduate student poster presenters include Noah Burby, Honors College, School of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences; Angeline Casella and Robert “Cade” King, School of Earth and Climate Sciences; Hayden Libby, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Molly Shea and Bruce Wyatt, Honors College, School of Economics.Ěý

Graduate student poster presenters include Yuksel Rudy Alkarem, Liam Hanley, Nicolas Cyr and Debora Barros, Coasts, Oceans, Ports, and Rivers Institute (COPRI); Taylor Bailey, Vanessa Mahan, Elisabeth Younce, Grace Johnson and Simin Moavenzadeh Ghaznavi, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Abigail Bennett, School of Forest Resources; Beth Davis, School of Biology and Ecology; Gabrielle Hillyer and Rachel White, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences; B Lauer and Jennifer Smith-Mayo, Department of Communication and Journalism; Alissa Miller-Gonzalez, Charity Zimmerman and Benjamin Cotton, School of Economics.

While conventional air filters help control the spread of disease in public spaces like hospitals and travel hubs, they struggle to keep the pathogens they capture viable for testing. The inefficiency can inhibit scientists’ ability to identify biological threats  early on, which could hinder any response and protection measures. 

The research team, led by Caitlin Howell, a 91¸ŁŔű associate professor of biomedical engineering, developed a composite membrane with a liquid layer for filters that is better suited for capturing viable bacterial and viral samples for analysis. They modeled the membrane after the Nepenthes pitcher plant, which has a slippery rim and inner walls that cause insects to fall and become trapped within its digestive fluid. By keeping the bacteria and viruses they capture feasible for examination, researchers say their novel liquid-coated air filters can enhance air sampling efforts, early pathogen detection and biosurveillance for national security.    

“I think for our patients and ourselves as caregivers, this technology will give us the confidence we are safer in performing care,” says Dr. Robert Bowie, medical director of the Down East Emergency Medical Institute. “Knowing we have improved safety makes it easier to leave our loved ones and go to work caring for others.”

The group of researchers developed multiple types of filters that contained their liquid-coated membrane technology, and tested their ability to preserve and release E. coli bacteria; SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19; and JC polyomavirus, which attacks the central nervous system. 

They specifically found that more airborne pathogens were captured by high efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters with their liquid-coated membrane than those without. The team published their findings in the journal . 

“During the early stages of the pandemic we were watching in real time how many problems were being caused by no one knowing where the airborne virus was and where it wasn’t. We had a system that could start to address that need, so it was our responsibility to step up and help out,” Howell says. 

The project was a significant interdisciplinary effort across the fields of biomedical engineering, chemical engineering and microbiology. The 91¸ŁŔű biomedical engineering team included first author and Susan J. Hunter Presidential Award winner Daniel Regan, Graduate School of Biomedical Science, Engineering (GSBSE) Ph.D. student Chun Ki Fong and former master’s student Justin Hardcastle. The microbiology team, led by associate professor Melissa Maginnis, included Avery Bond, a Ph.D. student in molecular and biomedical sciences, and Claudia Desjardins, then a university laboratory assistant in wastewater analysis. The chemical engineering team, based at UMass Amherst, consisted of professor Jessica Schiffman and Ph.D. student Shao-Hsiang Hung. The team was joined by Andrew Holmes, a biocontainment research scientist with University of Maine Cooperative Extension. 

Regan first pitched the initial concept for liquid-coated air filters to capture bacteria-containing aerosols to his dissertation committee in March of 2019, based on conversations with military researchers and concerns for detecting potential contamination during medical evacuations. He also featured it in a presentation for the 2020 91¸ŁŔű Student Symposium titled “Optimizing Liquid-Gated Membranes for Bioaerosol Capture and Release, which earned him the Dr. Susan J. Hunter Presidential Research Impact Award. 

The concept was further developed and refined when Howell, Maginnis, Schiffman, and Holmes realized that this could also apply to virus-containing aerosols in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and applied for funding from the National Science Foundation. In 2020, the project was awarded a $225,000 NSF EAGER award — an early concept grant that supports  “untested, but potentially transformative research ideas or approaches.”

“COVID-19 has been a constant reminder of the important role biosurveillance capabilities provide for decision makers to have detailed information for reducing biological risks” says Regan, now a fellow at the Janne E. Nolan Center on Strategic Weapons, an institute of the Council on Strategic Risks in Washington, D.C. “In the last year alone, the world has experienced high-consequence pathogens including an outbreak of monkeypox (or mpox), a resurgence of Ebola Sudan and high case numbers of Respiratory Syncytial Virus Infection (RSV). The need for pathogen early warning could not be greater, and it is our hope that further investment in liquid-coated air filters can help advance biosurveillance capabilities for aerosol detection.” 

Contact: Marcus Wolf, 207.581.3721; marcus.wolf@maine.edu

In Phage Genomics at the University of Maine, students can go from playing with dirt to being published scientists over the course of two semesters.

Despite being academically challenging and time intensive, Phage Genomics, or simply “Phage,” as the students know it, is almost universally beloved by those who have taken it. Since its founding, the course has not only led to over 46 published genomes and five published scientific papers that students have co-authored, but also an enduring community of students and peer mentorship network that is only getting stronger with the class’ recent designation as a Research Learning Experience (RLE) and opening up to students beyond the Honors College.

Phage is taught by Sally Molloy, associate professor of genomics; Melissa Maginnis, associate professor of microbiology; and Melody Neely, associate professor of molecular and biomedical sciences. The class, which is part of a nationwide program sponsored by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), is required for all incoming and transfer students in the Department of Molecular and Biomedical Sciences. 

Over the course of two semesters, Phage teaches students about bacteriophages, or viruses that infect bacterial hosts. Bacteriophages are considered the most numerous biological entities on Earth. For every bacterium, of which there are an estimated on Earth, scientists estimate there are approximately 10 phages that can attack it.

Studying how these viruses affect bacteria is important because it can help develop viral treatments and inform scientists’ understanding how viruses and bacteria interact, which is essential to understanding human health.

On top of traditional lectures and classwork, students in Phage have the opportunity to isolate their own bacteriophages from soil samples, which they often collect and bring in. Because bacteriophages are so common and microbial life in soil is so active, the amount of scientific discovery available to students is seemingly endless. 

The Phage journey begins in a one-week Black Bear Bridge RLE course called Rage of Phage before the start of the fall semester. Students isolate genomic DNA from pathogenic mycobacteria, which is sent to a sequencing facility. In the fall Phage class, the students assemble the bacterial genomes and search for prophages, which are bacteriophage genomes that have integrated into the bacterial genome and potentially impact the virulence of the bacterium. Students also isolate phages from the soil and name them (which always result in a variety of quirky monikers, like NiceHouse, MrRager and IdentityCrisis). The genomes of the newly isolated bacteriophages are sequenced over the winter break so that in the spring semester, students can characterize the genomes of both the prophages and bacteriophages by identifying genes, determining their function and learning about how the viruses impact the biology of their bacterial hosts.

Because the students are working with real materials instead of controlled experiments, things don’t always work out as planned — not all the prophages that are isolated in the first semester make it to the spring — but that failure is part of the learning process.

“We’re taking away from the mindset of, ‘I have to get an A,’ to ‘I can fail at something and learn from it and come back and do it better,’” Neely says. “You have to get it wrong before you get it right. That’s such a foreign idea to students coming into science.”

The students’ completed phage genomes are all housed on , but they also have the potential to be published in academic journals. In total since the class started in 2011, 46 phage genomes have been published out of work that 91¸ŁŔű students did in the class. For the first time, the 2021 cohort of the Phage class has five previously unidentified phages published in their own scientific papers: , , , and . 

Dorian Royal is a current junior biochemistry major who worked on the phage Oregano. He took the class because he was interested in the practical elements and impact of doing research on health and curing disease (though he says he had no idea that he could get published when he signed up for the class, an opportunity that he was “very grateful” for).  

“Instead of just learning stuff from a book and memorizing it, you’re applying and observing what you learn,” Royal says. “You are able to see, ‘Oh yeah, what I’m doing is really working.’ Having research that you’re able to call your own is a really validating feeling.”

Royal is also a football player, and says that as an instructor, Molloy was supportive and accommodating with his schedule traveling for games — which could be tricky, as the class meets for four hours twice a week in the fall and three times a week during the spring. 

“I don’t think it would have been as overwhelming as it could have been if I didn’t have that support,” Royal says. “It was really validating seeing Sally [Molloy] was always on my side and pushing me to always perform at my best.”

Because of the skills he built in the class and relationship he developed with Molloy, Royal has continued his work with phages in Molloy’s lab this year. 

The Phage professors are committed to making the challenging class possible for any student who is interested and committed to taking it. Sophomore Alison Kueck was even able to publish the phage she worked on in class, Periwinkle, after only taking Phage in the spring semester. She transferred into the molecular and cellular biology major from the medical laboratory science major (after a chance conversation with Molloy in the hallway, no less). After catching up on the material over winter break, Kueck was able to jump right in – with the support of Molloy, her classmates and the devoted teaching assistants, of course.  

“It’s the coolest class I’ve ever taken,” Kueck says. “It was so interesting to see something that I was working on that mattered. I’ve taken a million science courses and you’re regurgitating the same experiment and it goes in the trash at the end of the day. Getting published was amazing as well. I mean, how many kids get published at 18 or 19?”

Though HHMI designed the scientific process for isolating the phages, the Phage instructors have adapted the curriculum in other ways to support a more holistic approach to scientific learning. For example, Molloy says she will have students form groups in class to discuss and sometimes illustrate the topics covered; they even create group contracts with rules about how they’re going to interact with one another. 

The instructors also have students write reflective essays about their experience at the end of every week that the instructors read and write notes to students in response.

“We’re giving them lots of experiences in this class but if you don’t stop to think about those experiences in a detailed manner you don’t learn from those experiences,” Molloy says. “We’ve got to develop the space where trying new skills feels like a normal part of the process in a community where people are going to support you at your best and at your worst.”

Alan Baez Vazquez graduated in 2020 with a degree in biochemistry and is now pursuing his Ph.D. at Harvard University (in large part, he says, because Phage opened his eyes to the possibility of making scientific research a career). He says that the journaling assignments were surprisingly helpful when he was choosing graduate programs.

“That was the first time I ever had to talk about my feelings in a science class,” Vazquez says. “When you go out and get a Ph.D., a big part is finding a healthy lab environment, so being in touch with, ‘Oh, failure sucks in the lab, I need a support network to carry me through these failures’ is definitely very helpful.”

The mentorship element of the course is unique, too. Aside from the mentorship of Molloy, Maginnis, and Neely, the class has an unusually high number of teaching assistants — up to seven at a time for a class of 25 — and most of them are undergraduate students who had previously taken the Phage course. 

The TAs have a community, too. Seniors Aiden Pike and Kate Southworth are not only currently teaching assistants in the Phage course, but they also took Phage together their freshman year.

“I think the most important part of this class was the sense of community,” Pike says. “It is something that has kept me going through this degree.”

The mentorship element of Phage has, perhaps, been more important this year than ever.

“I feel like a lot of students have been having anxieties coming into this year, especially after COVID,” Southworth says. “A lot of what we do involves helping students feel supported and getting them the resources they need so the transition is easier for them. It’s been an awesome feeling knowing you are helping them out.”

Other past Phage students will teach office hours-style sessions outside of class called Phage Enrichment that are popular with current students (Kueck says that when she took the class, she attended Phage Enrichment every week).

“If you don’t understand the material, it’s not like you’re thrown out to the sharks. You have a chance to learn from each other,” says sophomore Eleanor Carrolton, a Phage enrichment instructor. “I didn’t understand ribosomes the first time and now I have a way to explain it to other people that’s more understandable.”

The experience has an impact on the student teachers, too. Vazquez said that being a TA for the Phage class his senior year of undergraduate prepared him for teaching as a graduate student. Southworth says that her experience as a Phage teaching assistant has solidified her decision to pursue an M.D./Ph.D., and Carrolton is considering becoming a professor when she previously wanted to focus solely on lab work.

This year, Phage was taught both semesters as an RLE, which has given the instructors more resources from that to help run the mentoring element of the course. 

“We want students to learn that they don’t have to be alone in any of their challenges, they can collaborate with each other, with faculty and within that community,” Molloy says. “We’re mirroring how it really is when you’re doing challenging research and learning. We don’t go up in our labs and by ourselves never discuss or talk to each other. That’s not how anything works and that’s not how the education system should work. We’re an R1 school. We want students to have access to the authentic research that 91¸ŁŔű can offer.”

The RLE program is a UMS TRANSFORMS initiative funded by the Harold Alfond Foundation’s historic $240 million challenge grant. 

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu 

The research done in King’s lab crosses disciplines to help scientists understand more about how genes work to control how cells function in both health and disease. King’s lab also trains 91¸ŁŔű student researchers in cutting-edge genetic research techniques that will propel them into their futures. 

King grew up in Orono, where his dad was a University of Maine faculty member in the College of Education and Human Development. He completed his undergraduate and master’s studies at Boston University, where he studied biomedical engineering. He enrolled as a mechanical engineering major, but as soon as he started student research focusing on protein structure and computer-aided drug design through the biomedical engineering department, he was hooked.

“By the end of the first day in the biomedical research lab I knew that I wanted to change my major to biomedical engineering,” King says. “Being able to use different biophysical models on a computer to figure out how drugs may interact with a protein to inhibit it is something I found fascinating.” 

King completed his studies during what he describes as “the dawn of the era of genomics” in the late 1990s. The work he did analyzing the massive influx of genetic data that came from sequencing genomes would eventually become what is known today as “bioinformatics.” 

“It’s routine to do large studies where you’re sequencing many, many genomes — hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands,” King says. “We’re in this era of very large data sets, and it’s good that we can generate the data, but it presents a lot of challenges in terms of how you interpret the data and how you analyze it.”

After he received his master’s degree, King worked for two different biotechnology companies analyzing genes and genomes in Cambridge, Massachusetts — first, Genetics Institute, and later, AstraZeneca — before heading to the The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, where he worked for a decade and led a bioinformatics team. He then moved on to the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory where he led their bioinformatics team. That team supports biomedical researchers throughout Maine as part of the Maine INBRE Network, a group that King still co-directs. While at Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, he completed his Ph.D. through the the University of Maine’s Graduate School of Biomedical Science and Engineering where he genes associated with limb regeneration in organisms like zebrafish, bichir and axolotls. King completed his doctorate and joined the 91¸ŁŔű faculty in January 2017, earning tenure in 2022.

King’s lab now has a range of projects that use bioinformatics — essentially, using high-performance computing to parse and translate the masses of genomic data — to study and, hopefully, solve different biological problems. 

One project looks at how the innate immune system responds to clearing the Influenza A virus by studying the patterns by which genes in zebrafish express themselves over the course of the infection. His lab uses these patterns to pick the genes that they then experimentally test in the zebrafish at the University of Maine’s zebrafish facility.

“Different sets of genes that function together as groups to regulate different immune cells and their responses,” King says. “I think the work that we’re doing studying the influenza virus is really cutting edge. One thing I hope we can understand better is how a class of genes called noncoding RNAs function. They are these really important regulatory genes. There are more of these noncoding genes than protein coding genes so they’re probably there for a reason and have some important function but we don’t know what they are.”

Another project in King’s lab, conducted in collaboration with Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center, seeks to understand the genetic risk factors of developing chronic kidney disease, which about a third of the U.S. population is at risk of developing and has been found to be a major risk factor for other diseases like diabetes and hypertension.

“We’re recruiting patients that come into the clinical research center and if they decide to join the study, we collect clinical data as well as family medical history information, and then a blood sample to extract DNA and characterize the complete genome of these individuals,” King explains. “We use those data to try and find alleles of genes that may increase the risk for chronic kidney disease.”

The lab’s work goes beyond medicine, too. King’s lab is collaborating with researchers at the School of Biology and Ecology, the School of Marine Science and the University of New Hampshire to figure out how certain phenotypes — the way in which genes are expressed — allow certain sparrows to thrive in harsh tidal marsh environments.

There are many threads which connect King’s projects and can advance human health. 

“Some of the analyses are quite similar regardless of whether you’re studying a human or animal genome. One of our focus areas in the study with the sparrows is kidney function because the sparrows have to survive in a very harsh environment where they are exposed to a lot of salt water,” King says. “If we can understand how they have adapted to a harsh environment, we can figure out how those same mechanisms might work in humans.” 

In addition to the lab work, King is passionate about spreading the word of bioinformatics to other scientists. Since 2005, he has taught a two-day introduction to bioinformatics course a couple of times a year at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. King has also developed training materials for scientists to use cloud computing resources for bioinformatics, and partnered with Northeastern’s Roux Institute in Portland to establish a 4+1 accelerated graduate program in bioinformatics.

“I do think it’s essential for all biologists to have some experience doing computational work,” King says. “You really can’t do things in the lab anymore without it. All of biology now requires analyzing these large datasets. Even learning how to use cloud computing technologies are becoming quite necessary and are skills that are certainly in high demand.”  

King makes the effort to ensure that his, like graduate student Brandy Soos and undergraduate Samuel Weafer, are exposed to both the experimental and computational side of biomedical research. No matter what they are studying, King says he also likes to match students to projects they are interested in to give them functional skills they can take with them no matter where they go. He has had students continue doctoral work in microbiology and computational biology at 91¸ŁŔű and a variety of other institutions, including Dartmouth and University of Rochester. Others have gone on to pursue medicine with prestigious post-baccalaureate programs. 

One talented student, Grace Smith, was the salutatorian in 2020 and just completed a highly prestigious post-baccalaureate at the National Cancer Institute. This fall she will begin the M.D. program at Harvard Medical School.

“I greatly enjoy working with the students at the University of Maine. It’s really rewarding to see what our students can accomplish when given meaningful research experiences” King says.

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu

The study looks at how the virus, known as JC polyomavirus (JCPyV), interacts with receptors on human host cells. Little is known about how the virus infects human cells, even though JCPyV affects up to 80% of the population and causes chronic kidney infection in hosts. In immunocompromised patients, however, JCPyV can also cause progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML), a deadly brain disease that destroys the protective layer around its nerve fibers. If left unattended, it can be fatal within a year.

The project is led by Melissa Maginnis, associate professor in molecular and biomedical sciences, in collaboration with Samuel Hess, professor of physics. Based on the findings of previous studies, the researchers hypothesize that a certain type of serotonin receptors, a subfamily known as 5-HT2Rs, let JCPyV enter the cells. Once inside, the virus recruits more of those same receptors into clusters to ferry more JCPyV into the cell. 

With the NIH funding, Maginnis and her team will look at the mechanisms that cause these clusters of serotonin receptors to form, how these clusters trigger the signals that cause more viral infection, and whether these receptors and their associated proteins bring the virus to the endoplasmic reticulum, the part of the cell that creates proteins and delivers them throughout the body.

“This grant allows us to continue exciting work in (our) lab to uncover how viruses modulate cellular receptor functions to facilitate viral invasion of host cells. Moving forward, we will define how cellular signals initiated from the receptor prime the cell for viral infection, ultimately preparing the cell for a virus takeover,” Maginnis says.

Understanding this process of viral entry could be the key to developing treatments that can address PML. The findings could also provide more insight into how other similarly structured viruses — including coronaviruses, herpesviruses and hemorrhagic fever Ebola and Marburg viruses — enter cells and activate the cellular signals that allow them to spread.

The lab work for the study is innovative and well-suited for student training. Preliminary data for the studies was gathered entirely by 91¸ŁŔű graduate and undergraduate students. 91¸ŁŔű graduate students in Maginnis’ laboratory will work on the next steps of the project for their dissertation research projects. Portions of the projects will also be used as independent projects for undergraduate researchers. 

“This project provides excellent student training opportunities through which they develop and hone their laboratory skill set, using viruses as tools to ask probing questions about cell biology. More importantly, research experiences for graduate and undergraduate students allow them to experiment with their own potential, which can open new doors for professional and personal growth,” Maginnis says.

Contact: Sam Schipani, samantha.schipani@maine.edu

91¸ŁŔű — 91¸ŁŔű System wastewater testing effort that began in fall 2020 and expanded to additional campuses in 2021 is in full operation as students settle back into campus life for the January–May 2022 semester.

Wastewater samples are collected twice weekly at the University of Maine in Orono, University of Maine at Fort Kent and University of Maine at Presque Isle, as well as on the University of Southern Maine Gorham campus. The wastewater testing program also analyzes samples collected at the municipal wastewater facilities in the towns of Orono and Farmington, which include contributions from the campuses located in those towns and the town populations — including any students who live off campus within the municipal sampling area. 

The wastewater testing program covers 5,615 residential students for the spring semester, representing 96% of the residential population of those campuses. Results are posted at the UMS website.

Wastewater samples are tested for the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in 91¸ŁŔű associate professor of microbiology Robert Wheeler’s biosafety level 2 lab in Orono. The Wheeler Lab coordinates and conducts sample collection and lab testing for all participating sites with support from campus and municipal staff, and can typically return results in 48 hours. 

“We’ve refined procedures around sampling and testing and built significant capacity in our lab over the past year,” says Wheeler, a member of the UMS Science Advisory Board. “It is exciting to see plans for a statewide expansion of wastewater monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 and increasing acknowledgment of the value of the type of data we have been collecting on our campuses since 2020.”

The System began conducting wastewater surveillance in August 2020, partnering with engineering, environmental sciences and survey firm Haley Ward (previously called CES, Inc.), for sample collection and coordination of testing with an outside lab. The Wheeler Lab conducted parallel lab testing on wastewater samples in August and September 2020 before taking over all lab analysis in October of that year. UMS now manages all aspects of the wastewater monitoring program and has conducted some level of wastewater sampling year-round since January 2021. 

The wastewater surveillance plan and ongoing monitoring is overseen by the UMS Science Advisory Board, established by Chancellor Dannel Malloy to help guide the System’s safe return planning. The board is chaired by Joan Ferrini-Mundy, president of 91¸ŁŔű and its regional campus, the University of Maine at Machias, who also serves as the System’s vice chancellor for research and innovation. 

“We’re committed to keeping our university communities among the safest places in Maine to live, learn and work, and continued wastewater monitoring is an important part of that effort,” says Malloy. “Professor Wheeler’s wastewater testing has helped us keep a close eye on the virus so that we can remain safe together.”  

“As the state’s flagship and public research university, 91¸ŁŔű is proud to be home to a comprehensive wastewater monitoring program that supports COVID-19 tracking not only on our campuses, but also in two of our campus communities,” says Ferrini-Mundy. “The Wheeler Lab has been sampling and testing wastewater for more than a year, helping to advance the layered, science-driven planning and response efforts that have allowed us to safely deliver in-person learning experiences at 91¸ŁŔű and systemwide.”  

91¸ŁŔű wastewater testing

Quantitative SARS-CoV-2 measurements in untreated sewage can provide information on changes in total COVID-19 infection in the contributing community. Research also suggests that increases in viral material in community wastewater occur before signs or symptoms of COVID-19. This can help to provide an early warning of an increase in the number of infected people within a specific community, including those who are infected but don’t develop symptoms. Wastewater observation works because infected people may start shedding virus in their stool a few days before they show any symptoms of disease, or even if they never show symptoms.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other agencies have initiated the to help public health officials understand the extent of COVID-19 infections in communities.

For more information about University of Maine System wastewater testing, .

Contact: Ashley Forbes, ashley.forbes@maine.edu