Chasing the Right Rainbows
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| When she learned she’d won the Ricci Fellowship, Sri Dhyana says, “I told myself, ’This is going to be an incredible opportunity and I’ve got to work as hard as I can and make the best of it.’ ” |
Some experiments yield expected results. Others reveal pleasant surprises. Occasionally, you get both in one shot. Such is the case with the first John S. Ricci Fellowships.
Established in 2006 by University of Southern Maine alumnus and Auburn native Ray Stevens ’86, the fellowship is named after Professor Emeritus of Chemistry John S. Ricci. It was Ricci’s mentoring that turned Stevens from a lack-luster student into a brilliant researcher. Today, Stevens has his own lab at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., the largest biomedical research facility in the United States.
Stevens’s intention for the fellowship is to bring in a USM student and professor for a summer of research, replicating the experience Ricci shared with him 20 years ago at the Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, N.Y.
In an unexpected twist, the first Ricci Fellows were not a professor-student pairing, but two students, Sri Dhyana of Portland and Ian Slaymaker of Camden. When they headed west from USM, they left from two very different places. But after their time in La Jolla, both will go forward in their careers under Stevens’s watchful eye.
Sri Dhyana will graduate in May 2008 with a bachelor’s degree in physics and a minor in biochemistry. After 10 years, she’ll be the first to say it’s been a long time coming. In those early years, she was a good student but lacked a sense of purpose.
“When it got really tough,” she says, “sometimes I’d sit back and think, ‘Why am I doing all this? Am I going to graduate with these degrees and hate the only jobs available to me? Am I chasing the right rainbows?’ ”
That changed in 2005, when she shipped out to Iraq with the 152nd Maintenance Company, Maine Army National Guard out of Augusta. She spent a year at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, the last eight months as a tower guard. The experience gave her time to examine her life.
“When I came back, I was just on fire, ready to go. I buckled down in school immediately,” she says. “It was a really strange adjustment, coming back. I needed (school) to help rehabilitate myself. It really helped ground me.”
In March 2007, the Chemistry Department announced it was accepting applications for the Ricci Fellowship. Applicants were to write an essay, stating their career objectives and how the fellowship would help achieve them.
Dhyana applied, with chemistry professor Jim Ford as her faculty mentor, but didn’t like her chances. Too many other applicants, she felt, had far more experience. She figured she’d spend the summer working at a lab on campus, relaxing a bit and learning to sail on Portland Harbor.
The application review panel, says Tom Newton, chair of the Chemistry Department, “was pretty wide open. We were interested in providing students a unique opportunity to do research with a top-flight, absolutely first-class organization,” he says. “We weren’t looking for someone who had credentials, or who was a raw recruit.”
Of the six applicants, Dhyana was the panel’s top choice. Immediately, she began her scramble to California.
“I went out there with no expectations,” she says. “I told myself, ‘This is going to be an incredible opportunity and I’ve got to work as hard as I can and make the best of it.’ ”
It wasn’t long before Ford decided he couldn’t leave his family for the 12-week program. So Dhyana was assigned to work with staff scientist Kent Baker. Baker, like Dhyana, majored in physics as an undergraduate and now holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry. The two made an immediate connection.
Baker gave Dhyana two books. One was an introduction to biochemistry. The other was Crystallography Made Crystal Clear, by Gale Rhodes. Dhyana was registered to take biochemistry in the fall with Rhodes, a longtime USM professor.
As Stevens had done with Ricci 20 years earlier, Dhyana and Baker worked long and often odd hours, sometimes six days a week. What little free time she had was spent with scientists from Scripps and the nearby Salk Institute, learning to sail San Diego Bay.
In an e-mail to faculty back at USM, Dhyana described her work as “conducting thermal stability assays with connexin 26, a membrane protein that forms gap junction membrane channels, and is responsible for transfer of ions and small molecules between neighboring cells… One of Ray’s major goals was to have me produce results that were worthy of a paper, and we are fairly certain at this point that we will be able (to do that).”
She completed the paper shortly after returning to Maine, and it is currently being considered for publication. It also will be an important part of her graduate school application. She intends to earn a doctorate in biochemistry. As of March, Dhyanna had applied to graduate school but was considering taking time off,
possibly to teach.
“The experience confirmed that I really am chasing the right rainbows,” Dhyana says. “For the first time in my life, when people ask me what is it I do, I can look them in the eye and say, ‘I’m a scientist.’ That was a pretty big moment for me.”
“Sri did a fantastic job out here,” Stevens says. “I could not have been more pleased with how well things went.”
Slaymaker was deeply disappointed not to win the Fellowship, says Caryn Prudente, his USM faculty advisor. He had been anxious about missing out on internships in the summer of 2006, and very much wanted the Ricci Fellowship. So much so, he wrote to Stevens directly not long after learning of the decision.
“I basically told him that if there was any way I could work in his lab for the summer, I’d do it,” Slaymaker says. “I’d sleep in my truck if I had to. I really wanted to work at Scripps.”
Prudente wrote a strong letter of support on Slaymaker’s behalf.
“Ian is your classic USM student—a diamond in the rough,” she says. “He was not the strongest student academically, and he had a lot of outside interests. But he just loved research. He loved getting his hands on things in the lab and making connections.
“I was hoping all that might have a familiar ring to it with Ray.”
At about the same time, Ford, Dhyana’s advisor, chose not to accept the faculty fellowship to Scripps. That money was made available to Slaymaker, and he headed west.
“I came here initially because I thought it was all very interesting, but didn’t really have a direction,” he says. “The experience has completely shaped my goals.”
In California, Slaymaker set to work assisting staff researchers Mauro Milini and Michael Bracey. They spent “an ungodly amount of time in the lab.” But he had the discipline and stamina to do it. Slaymaker had been on the USM wrestling team, competing in the 165-pound weight class. In the lab, often he drew on what he calls “that wrestler’s attitude.”
“You push your body to go way beyond where your mind will let it go,” he says. He referred to the sport’s strict policy on weight classes. The wrestler who is as little as one pound over the limit of the weight class cannot compete. “So you do whatever you need to do to make weight. It’s the same thing with research. If you have to get to the lab at 3 a.m. to make your project move along, you do it. You do whatever it takes.”
Slaymaker’s work over the summer centered on finding an effective way to measure the effects of inhibitors on the human enzyme, fatty acid amide hydrolase. Inhibition of the enzyme can ease pain and inflammation, which is of interest to drug companies. Hundreds of inhibitors have been created, and Slaymaker’s research screened some of them for potential use in drugs.
The work paid off. “Based on how impressed I was with his project during the summer and the fact he had just graduated from USM, I invited Ian to spend the year doing research here in La Jolla and working with me to prepare him for graduate school,” Stevens says. “I have incredibly high expectations for him as well.”
As of March, Slaymaker was finishing up his work at Scripps and preparing to enroll in a Ph.D. program at the University of Southern California, where Stevens earned his doctorate. Like Dhyana, Slaymaker intends to earn a doctorate in biochemistry.
“Clearly, this was a very productive summer for both Sri and Ian,” Stevens says, “and I look forward to the future years of Ricci Fellows spending time at Scripps.”
The one disappointment she encountered in La Jolla, Dhyana says, came on her last day on the Scripps campus. She wanted a photo taken of her with Stevens, but a schedule conflict took him off campus. She sent him an e-mail, angrily asking how could he let her leave without saying goodbye?
“He replied with something like, ‘You’re not going to shake me that easily,’ ” she says. “Basically, he’s saying, ‘I’m invested in your life now, and you’ve got me here for the rest of your career.’
“I have a feeling it’s going to be the same way for whoever else goes out there on the following internships.”
Slaymaker agrees. “Ray’s thankful for who he is and what he has, and he wants to share it,” Slaymaker says. “He surrounds himself with people who are good people as well as being accomplished. But that’s Ray. He’s a product of Maine.”
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