Assistant Professor of Chemistry Christopher Whidbey, PhD, has earned acclaim this year for his research.
Whidbey has received a $50,000 award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA) for his ideas probing the relationship between the gut microbiome and the brain. The cash award will fund ongoing undergraduate student research at Seattle University.
"I’m working with five full-time paid student researchers this summer and this award will fund two more researchers next summer," says Whidbey. "I develop research questions for my students and I mentor them as they find answers. It’s exactly how scientific research happens."
The award came after Whidbey and his research partner presented questions and findings at a conference in Tuscon, Arizona, this past spring. Organized by RCSA, the “Scialog” conference is designed to support research by stimulating intensive interdisciplinary conversation and community building around important scientific themes.
"We know that the microorganisms in our gut are important to our health, we just don't know enough about some of those organisms and just how powerful they are," explains Whidbey. "This research is an attempt to understand exactly how gut microbes are sending signals to the microglia in the brain.”
In addition to his gut microbiome research and mentoring, Whidbey’s paper on “Bacterial amylases enable glycogen degradation by the vaginal microbiome” has just been published in Nature Microbiology.
"The paper focuses on learning how the healthy lactic acid bacteria present in the vaginal tract survive and fight off other bacteria that can cause disease," he says. “We are excited that this information could be leveraged to develop better treatments for conditions like bacterial vaginosis and pre-term birth, which are sorely understudied subjects.”
Read Whidbey’s paper here. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-023-01447-2
For media inquiries, contact Lincoln Vander Veen at vanderv1@seattleu.edu or 425-830-2448.
Thursday, August 10, 2023