“I’ve done things at Minot State that I never dreamed I would be able to do,” says Heidi Super, Ph.D, associate professor of biology. “I have the equipment that pretty much any lab in the United States or internationally would have to do DNA expression analysis. It’s been a wonderful thing.” 

INBRE funding enables Super, who specializes in leukemia research, to take students to the annual American Association for Cancer Research meeting. Last April in San Diego, one of her students – Aileen Aldrich, a junior chemistry major from Minot – finished second in the association’s undergraduate poster competition.

“When you go to this meeting, you see how much each person doing their own research contributes to moving cancer research forward,” says Aldrich, who plans to apply to medical school at UND. “It was definitely a good experience to be immersed in so much knowledge.” 

With INBRE funding, MSU also developed outreach programs for American Indian students at Fort Berthold Community College and Turtle Mountain Community College that enable them to participate in research projects, both in the lab and in the field on the reservations. 

“It’s been a really good, growing collaboration,” says Chris Beachy, Ph.D., professor of biology at MSU. “It’s been productive and we’re thankful for it. It’s been great for the students. They love it. They want to keep coming back.” 

Involvement in INBRE research gives MSU students such as Steven Lewis, a chemistry major from Burlington, a new perspective on the future. 

  “When I came to college, it was with the idea of becoming a pharmacist,” he says. ”Now that I’ve done research, I see that there are a lot of exciting possibilities. It definitely opens your eyes to the different horizons in the chemistry field.” 

INBRE researcher Heidi Super (top) works in the molecular biology lab at Minot State with Aileen Aldrich, a junior double major in chemistry and biology.