Biology Faculty Member Awarded $450K NIH Grant to Expand Student Research Opportunities

By: Erik Pedersen, Content Strategy Director

BALTIMORE – Notre Dame of Maryland University’s Biology Department was recently awarded a $451,560 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop genomic data science curricula that will use cloud computing to increase student access to research opportunities both locally and abroad.

Led by principal investigator Dr. Jennifer Kerr, NDMU’s Dr. Mary Kay Shartle Galotto ’64 Endowed Chair in the Biological Sciences, this project will enable diverse educational institutions, especially those not traditionally engaged in genomics research, to provide their students with hands-on research experiences in genomics and computational skills.

Funding for the three-year grant, which will begin in November 2024, is provided through recent funding from the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), an institute of the NIH, for "Broadening Opportunities for Computational Genomics and Data Science Education" as part of the research education grant (UE5) program. This program aims to support educational activities that encourage individuals from diverse backgrounds, including those from groups underrepresented in the biomedical and behavioral sciences, to pursue further studies or careers in research.

“Receiving a grant from the NIH is a fantastic accomplishment for Notre Dame of Maryland, and it will provide countless benefits for our students,” said Dr. Kerr. “Curriculum grants from the NIH are quite rare for smaller undergraduate institutions and community colleges, and this funding demonstrates their commitment to involving students in bioinformatics research. This project will significantly increase data accessibility and analysis for our undergraduates.”

This project continues Dr. Kerr’s collaboration with Co-principal investigator Dr. Rosa Alcazar at Clovis Community College in California, who co-founded C-MOOR to provide early research experiences for the next generation of data science.

The NIH grant will expand access to Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs) for students through computational genomics and data science curriculum. Dr. Kerr had previously partnered with C-MOOR to pilot a short-format, miniCURE centered on RNA sequencing. That curriculum will be further developed through the grant, along with a new miniCURE focusing on analyzing the human microbiome.

Students participating in the curriculum will be able to access diverse datasets, tools, and training content through the NHGRI Genomic Data Science Analysis, Visualization, and Informatics Lab-Space (AnVIL) platform.

“The AnVIL platform stores many high value human genomic datasets and is increasingly being used by NIH researchers to perform their work, and this will make it easier for undergraduates to use AnVIL within a classroom setting,” said Dr. Kerr. “Many students are working on tablets or laptops that don’t have the storage capacity and computing power to be able to analyze large sets of data. They will now be able to access these tools in a virtual, cloud setting through access to the AnVIL infrastructure.”

Grant funding will also support the hiring of a Genomics Data Science Education Developer to oversee proper implementation of the new technology. NDMU will work in tandem with Clovis Community College to pilot the developed curriculum. Following the pilot period, the two schools will collaborate with additional institutions, including two Hispanic-serving institutions and one Tribal College, to allow for evaluation and revision while further expanding data science access to currently underserved students.

Established in 1895, Notre Dame of Maryland University (NDMU) is a private, Catholic institution in Baltimore, Maryland, with the mission to educate leaders to transform the world. Notre Dame has been named one of the best "Regional Universities North" by U.S. News & World Report.