News Release
Undergraduate Award Ceremony Nicole Sherman, from Valparaiso, Neb., was among 43 Johns Hopkins University students to receive a Provost's Undergraduate Research Award for the 2000-2001 academic year. Results of Sherman's research, titled "Molecular Regulation of the Development of 'Fertilization Competence' of Sperm," were presented at an awards ceremony at Hopkins on April 5. Sherman graduated from Vilseck High School in Vilseck, Germany Sherman's research results could feed into a patent application and the potential development of new fertility therapies. "Nikki's looking for things that interact with mammalian sperm that might modulate their activity during fertilization," said mentor Janice Evans, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. Evans praised Sherman's enthusiasm and work ethic, particularly in the face of a sudden and unexpected need to revise her research plan. "I made my proposal to the Provost Awards committee, and the day after that someone came out and published my experiment," remembered Sherman, a senior majoring in public health. "I had made the proteins, I was ready to go ahead with the assay, and then someone published it." With a little help from Evans, though, Sherman soon had a "plan B" underway. "Both of the candidate molecules (the one in the original application and the one she's been working with more recently) have been hypothesized to be involved in sperm-egg binding," explained Evans. Sherman, who joked that she was "one of those people T.A.s get warned about," said she plans to go into clinical medicine, but has always been "curious about the other side of the house." "When you think about it, it's a really amazing program that people like me can kind of play around in the lab and try to figure things out the experimental way," said Sherman. "It's cool being on the cutting edge of a field. This isn't in books anywhere."
The Johns Hopkins University is recognized as the
country's first graduate research university, and has been
in recent years the leader among the nation's research
universities in winning federal research and development
grants.
The opportunity to be involved in important research is
one of the distinguishing characteristics of an
undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins. About 80 percent
of the university's undergraduates engage in some form of
independent research during their four years, most often
alongside top researchers in their fields.
The Provost's Undergraduate Research Awards
is one of these research opportunities, open to
students in each of the university's four schools with full-
time undergraduates: the Krieger School of Arts and
Sciences, the G.W.C. Whiting School of Engineering, the
Peabody Conservatory and the School of Nursing. Since 1993,
about 40 students each year have been awarded up to $2,500
to propose and conduct original research, some results of
which have been published in professional journals. The
awards, begun by then provost Joseph Cooper and funded
through a donation from the Hodson Trust, are an important
part of the university's commitment to research.
Go to Headlines@HopkinsHome Page
|