Twenty-five students from 10 different undergraduate and community college programs have joined the Institutional Development Award Program (IDeA) Networks of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE)/ Biomedical Research Infrastructure Network (BRIN) program.
Established in 2001, the BRIN program was created to expose students to serious biomedical research, build a statewide biomedical research infrastructure between undergraduate and graduate institutions and to strengthen undergraduate institution’s infrastructure and increase its capacity to conduct cutting-edge biomedical and behavioral research.
Today, you’ll meet Jon Demuth, one of the new BRIN scholars on campus.
Jon Demuth
University of Nebraska at Omaha sophomore
Bioinformatics major
Q. Tell me about yourself. Who are your heroes?
A. I am a sophomore at the University of Nebraska at Omaha majoring in bioinformatics. I grew up in Creighton, Neb., a small town of 1,200 people located about 45 miles north of Norfolk. I would have to say that my parents are my “heroes.” They were always there for me and ultimately enabled me to get to where I am today.
Q. What are your career goals?
A. I plan on getting my undergraduate degree from UNO, and continuing my education in a field related to medical research. I have not yet decided which specific area of research I want to pursue. However, I believe that it will be research directed toward early diagnosis and/or treatment of a disease.
Q. How did you become interested in science?
A. I became interested in science my junior and senior years of high school. I took biology, chemistry, physics, and anatomy courses and surprisingly enjoyed them. Part of the reason could be that I am a curious person — I like to know why things are the way they are — and science explains a lot of that.
Q. What do you hope the BRIN program will do for you?
A. The BRIN program will give me a better idea of what research is all about. It also will guide me in the general direction of what I want to focus my career on. Hopefully, it will shed some light on what my career path is actually like in the “real world.”
Q. How do you see science evolving over the next 20 years?
A. Science grows exponentially with each generation. This is mostly due to the growth in technology. New tools being available to study science will continue to allow researchers to make new discoveries. It will be exciting to watch the changes in the next 20 years.