Bridges to the Doctorate

Kennesaw State University is proud to sponsor the Peach State Bridges to the Doctorate Program! The program offers support for students from groups underrepresented in biomedical and behavioral sciences to earn masters' degrees in the College of Science and Mathematics innovative research-based graduate programs in Integrative Biology or Chemical Sciences and transition to doctoral programs at major research universities. The program is currently supported by the College of Science and Mathematics. 

We offer cutting-edge training in a small, nurturing, but vigorously active environment. Participants receive training that is simply unavailable anywhere else at the master’s level. Many of our faculty are funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) in various disciplines. Participants are matched with a mentor/coach, create and implement an individual development plan (IDP), pursue research and research training in a variety of biomedically relevant fields and participate in organized doctoral transition activities. Participants may bridge to any biomedical doctoral program of their choice - our alumni are currently pursuing Ph.D.s at Vanderbilt, Emory, Duke, Brandeis and other top-tier research universities.

Bridges scholars should meet all requirements of the masters program of interest and be dedicated to pursuing a Ph.D. in a biomedical field upon completion of their studies at Kennesaw State.

ksu student and faculty member using microscope in lab

Please take a look around the site. We are very proud of our students and faculty, the research they do, and the discoveries they make. But mostly, we are proud of our where our alumni go and what they do - we are quite successful in catalyzing the development of young scientists into thriving Ph.D. students.

If you think the Bridges to the Doctorate Program might be right for your next career step or if you simply want more information, please contact the program Co-Directors, Dr. Martin Hudson or Dr. Melanie Griffin.

Mentors

Bridges Scholars

News and Events

  • December

    • Morgan Woods, Azeeza Abdulrauf, and Lorenna Garcia-Bochas were all selected among applications from around the country to participate in the I-Corps Bio-Entrepreneurship summer workshop, which was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, the Ernest E. Just Institute for the Life Sciences, the Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), The California State University I-Corps, University of New Hampshire I-Corps, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology I-Corps. Find out more about their experience!

    October

    • Dr. Martin Hudson is at it again! He is the recipient of a 3 yr, $406,500 NIH grant to investigate neurological development as they relate to disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Read the News article on News at KSU »

    September

    • Wendy Aquino-Nunez (MSIB '18) and Martin Hudson's (among others) paper "cnd-1/NeuroD1 Functions with the Homeobox Gene ceh-5/Vax2 and Hox Gene ­ceh-13/Labial to Specify Aspects of RME and DD Neuron Fate in Caenorhabditis elegans" was just published in G3! Read the publication »

    April 

    • Sidney Stuckett (MSIB '21) is a contributing author on the Hudson Lab's just-published G3 paper, "ngn-1/neurogenin Activates Transcription of Multiple Terminal Selector Transcription Factors in the Caenorhabditis elegans Nervous System." As we say around here, download early and often (for free!). Read the publication »

    March

    • After receiving several offers from competitive programs, Michael Woods (MSIB '21) has chosen to accept an offer from The University of Minnesota's Graduate Program in Pharmacology. Even better, he has received a Dean's Dinstinguised Fellowship that will fund an early start, professional development throughout his studies and, best of all, a cash bonus! Krista Barbour (MSIB '20), who also had to sort through multiple offers, will be staying closer to home and matriculating into UGA's Integrated Life Sciences Ph.D. Program. UGA has awarded her an Osborne Fellowship to support her doctoral studies.

    February

    • Dr. Kojo Mensa-Wilmot has been named Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics. Currently at UGA, he will bring his NIH-funded cellular biology and parasitology research program to KSU. Arriving Fall, 2020, he is excited about mentoring KSU students in research, including Bridges students. Learn more about his research here. Read the full article on the News at KSU website »
    • Krista Barbour (MSIB '20) presented her work at Morehouse Medical School Curtis L. Parker Student Research Symposium.
      Krista at Morehouse

  • November

    • Hot off the virtual presses! Marina Whisby-Pitts garnered her first authorship! Hubbs, N.B, Whisby-Pitts, M.M. and McMurry, J.L. "Kinetic analysis of bacteriophage Sf6 binding to outer membrane protein a using whole virions" Acta Virologica, (2019) 63(4), 450-458. It's behind a paywall, but the manuscript version is here.

    August

    • New funding! Jonathan McMurry received a renewal award of $395,641 for his AREA grant to further develop the cell-penetrating peptide adaptor system his lab works on!

    June

    • It's a small world! Dr. Martin Hudson caught up with his protege and 2017 Bridges Alum Tyler Hill, now a Ph.D. student in the Sengupta Lab at Brandeis, at the 22nd International C. elegans Conference in Los Angeles, CA! 

    Tyler & Martin

    May

    • Hot off the virtual presses! Congratulations to Dr. Lisa Ganser and her group, including Bridges Scholars Victoria Mendiola ('19) and Brandon Stewart ('20) for their just-accepted paper, "d-Amphetamine Exposure Differentially Disrupts Signaling Across Ontogeny in the Zebrafish," now in press for Bioelectricity!

    April

    March

    • For a fourth year running, 100% of our Bridges participants have received offers from doctoral programs. Xzaviar Solone has accepted admission to the University of Florida. Victoria Mendiola has accepted an offer from UGA and Tequila Porter is off to UC-Davis!
    • New funding! Dr. Evelina Sterling has received a $404,363 grant from the National Institute on Aging for her study "Healthy together: A self-management and support intervention for low-income African American men with multiple chronic conditions." 

    April

    • Krista Barbour received a travel award for her poster presentation at the 2019 ASM Microbe Meeting in San Francisco, CA to be held on June 20-24th.  She was one of four selected by both ASM and the Medical Mycological Society of the Americas and will present a short talk at the annual MMSA Meeting and Banquet on June 22nd. Excellent job, Krista!

    March

    • Mareena Whisby-Pitts got her first publication! Hubbs, N.B., *Whisby-Pitts, M.M. and McMurry, J.L. (2019) “Kinetic analysis of bacteriophage Sf6 binding to outer membrane protein A using whole virions,”Acta Viorlogica (in press - manuscript available on BioRxiv preprint server: https://doi.org/10.1101/509141).

  • November

    • Victoria Mendiola traveled to New Orleans to present her work at the American Physiology Society Meeting. Tequila Porter and Xzaviar Solone traveled to scenic Indianapolis, IN for the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students where they presented their work. 

    September

    • New funding. Dr. Daniel Morris has received a $403,800 NIH R15 AREA grant that will fund his work on CRISPR/Cas genome editing! 

    April

     

    January

    • Xzaviar Solone (MSIB '19) won a nationally competitive 2018 Graduate Student Travel Award to attend the American Society for Biochemistry & Molecular Biology Meeting in sunny San Diego, CA! He will present his work “c-JUN N-terminal kinase (JNKα1) binds and inhibits eNOS via phosphorylation at S116, differentiating it from p38 and ERK-mediated inhibition." Congratulations and bon voyage, Xzaviar!

  • October

    • Mareena Whisby-Pitts presented her research at the 2017 STEM Research and Career Symposium held at Emory University, Atlanta GA.  Mareena also received a travel award to support her attendance.
    • Shaquanna Young presented her work at the Georgia Bio Innovation Summit.

    August

    • Wendy Aquino-Nunez and Shaquanna Young attended the GABio Emerging Leaders Network event, "Careers in Life Sciences Series: Careers in Industry (at the Bench AND Beyond)," held at the Canadian Consulate.

    Wendy Aquino-Nunez and Shaquanna Young attended the GABio Emerging Leaders Network event

    • Welcome Bridges Class of 2019! We are joined this fall by Victoria Mendiola (KSU), Tequila Porter (Winston-Salem State University) and Xzaviar Solone (Bethune-Cookman University). See Participants page for more information.
    • New funding! Michael Van Dyke was awarded a $118,840 NSF grant for "RUI: Refractory Cleavage Sites to Elucidate Type IIS Restriction Endonuclease Mechanisms."

    May

    • Bridging successes! Congratulations to the Class of 2017, all of whom have successfully bridged to Ph.D. programs! Crystal Smith will enroll in the Medical University of South Carolina Neuroscience Institute, Tyler Hill is off to Brandeis Unviersity's Neurocience Program, and Aaron Ledet has accepted the Dean's Strategic Scholarship to UT-Austin's Cellular & Molecular Biology Biochemistry Ph.D. Program. Well done, everyone!
    • Wendy Aquino-Nunez ('18) was awarded an NIGMS Scholarship to attend the Cold Spring Harbor Single Cell Analysis Course this summer.
    • Hot off the virtual presses! Verra Ngwa's ('16) first author paper was just published at PLoS One: Ngwa, V.M., Axford, D.S., Healey, A.N., Nowak, S.J., Chrestensen, C.A. and McMurry, J.L. (2017) “A versatile cell-penetrating peptide-adaptor system for efficient delivery of molecular cargos to subcellular destinations." Read it here!

    April 

    • Congratulations to Aaron Ledet ('17), who won the KSU 3 Minute Thesis competition on Apr. 21!
    • Bridging Success! All of the graduating members of the Class of 2017 have been accepted to top-tier doctoral programs! Details to follow!
    • A new mentor is arriving! Dr. Tom Leeper will be joining the Chemistry & Biochemistry faculty this fall. He is an NMR spectroscopist who studies structures of protein-protein, protein-nucleic acid, protein-metal ion, and peptide-metal ion complexes. Tom is excited about mentoring Bridges students. 

    February

    • New stars are born! Tyler Hill ('17) and Wendy Aquino-Nunez ('18) were featured on a CBS 46 news story about research at KSU. 
    • Hot off the virtual presses is Juan Rodriguez's ('16) first-author paper! Rodriguez, J.D., Haq, S., Bachvaroff, T., Nowak, K.F., Nowak, S.J., Morgan, D., Cherny, V.V., Sapp, M.M. Bernstein, S., Bolt, A., DeCoursey, T.E., Place, A.R. and Smith, S.M. (2017) "Identification of a vacuolar proton channel that triggers the bioluminescent flash in dinoflagellates." PLoS One, 8;12(2):e0171594. Available by open access here.
    • Abstract accepted! Mareena Whisby ('18) will present a poster entitled "Kinetic characterization of interactions between bacteriophage Sf6 and host OmpA" at the upcoming American Society for Microbiology meeting in New Orleans.
    • New funding! Marcus Davis was awarded $358,803 from the National Science Foundation for "Evolutionary origins of the vertebrate paired appendage gene regulatory network." Read about Dr. Davis' grant and research here.

  • December

    • New funding! Mentors Martin Hudson and Jonathan McMurry have been awarded NIH R15 grants. They join Anton Bryantsev, Carol Chrestensen, Scott Nowak and Michael Van Dyke as currently NIH-funded Bridges Mentors.

    Photo of Tyler Hill at Emory-Laney Graduate School STEM Research and Career Symposium
    September

    • Tyler Hill ('17) wowed the crowd with his talk at the Emory-Laney Graduate School STEM Research and Career Symposium. Crystal Smith ('17) also impressed with her poster presentation. Our Bridges students were joined by fellow MSIB student Zach Mielko.
    • New funding! Daniela Tapu received a $219,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for "Anionic Multitopic N-Heterocyclic Carbenes: Building Blocks for Molecular and Supramolecular Architectures."

    July/August

    • Crystal Smith spent part of the summer in Miami learning CRISPR/Cas. Aaron Ledet also recently pursued a collaborative project at Rush University in Chicago.

    June

    May

    April

    March

    • 3/29 Verra Ngwa appeared on Georgia Public Broadcasting's "On Second Thought with Celeste Headlee" to discuss her cell-penetrating peptide research. Listen to the episode here.

    Verra Ngwa on GPB

    February

    • Peach State B2D 2, Big Bad World 0! Both of our second year participants have been admitted to competitive doctoral programs! Congratulations Verra & Juan! Details (and additional admissions, knock on wood!) forthcoming!

    January

    • Just accepted! Salerno, J.C., Ngwa, V.M., Nowak, S.N., Chrestensen, C.A., Healey, A.N. and McMurry, J.L. (2016) "Novel cell penetrating peptide-adaptors effect intracellular delivery and endosomal escape of protein cargos." Journal of Cell Science! epub ahead of print here! 2/8/16 Update! This paper was just selected as an "In this issue" spotlight article!
    • And the hits just keep on coming! Verra Ngwa's abstract, "Novel Cell-Penetrating Peptides Overcome Endosomal Escape and Deliver Protein Cargos into the Cell," has been accepted for a talk at ASBMB! Look out, San Diego!!!
    • Verra Ngwa ('16) won a travel award to attend the ASBMB Meeting in San Diego in April! Congratulations, Verra!

  • December

    • Juan Rodriguez ('16) presented a poster entitled "The HV1 proton channel localizes to scintillons, the bioluminescent organlelles of dinoflagellates" at the American Society for Cell Biology Meeting in San Diego.

    November

    • Juan Rodriguez ('16) won a graduate student poster award at the Southeastern Branch of the American Society for Microbiology.
    • Verra Ngwa, (’16) presented at the Annual Biomedical Research Confere
      Verra Ngwa with NIH Bridges Program Direstor, Dr. Michelle Hamlet
      nce for Minority Students in Seattle, WA. Ms. Ngwa presented a poster on her work entitled “Novel cell-penetrating peptides deliver and release protein cargo into cells.”
      (RIGHT) Photo of Verra Ngwa with NIH Bridges Program Director, Dr. Michelle Hamlet, at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) 2015.

    August

    • Photo of students in lab; Photo courtesy of Kennesaw State University
      National Institutes of Health awards Kennesaw State University $1 million grant View Article »
      (      RIGHT)       Photo of students in the lab; Photo courtesy of Kennesaw State University