Like bacteria, fungi can cause disease inside your body and on your skin, or even grow on medical equipment like catheter tubing and wound dressings. Many fungal diseases are treatable with antifungal medications, but drug resistance is a growing problem. With a new four-year, $1.3 million grant from NIH, Jeffrey Gardner and his students will be looking for new ways to target disease-causing fungi.

Typically, drugs that treat fungal disease prevent the fungus from making its cell wall, which either kills the fungus outright or weakens it enough that the immune system can finish it off. But that method is highly susceptible to developing resistance.

“But what if you had an external attack on the fungus? What if there were enzymes that actively degraded the fungal cell wall, which is not going to generate resistance easily?” asks Gardner, associate professor of biological sciences. “Our goal is to find enzymes that effectively break down the fungal cell wall, that can be used as a treatment in parallel with cell wall synthesis blockers, or on their own.”

Homing in on the right enzyme

With the new support from NIH, Gardner’s lab will investigate hundreds of bacterial enzymes to figure out which best target Aspergillus fungus, a group of common disease-causing mold species. Previous work from other groups has found particular bacterial species that slow down fungal growth. Gardner’s team will start by looking at every gene and protein in these bacteria to figure out “which genes are turned on, and which proteins are made, while the bacteria are degrading and eating the fungus,” he explains.

Gardner expects that should whittle down the candidate list from about 4,000 genes to a few hundred. “How do we figure out which ones of those couple hundred actually matter? That’s where our genetic system comes in,” he says. The team will generate bacterial strains that lack a functional version of each of the candidate genes and see which strains are less efficient at eating the fungus.

That process should further narrow the list of genes to a few dozen, Gardner says. Then, they’ll produce strains that are missing different combinations of the candidate genes. When they find a combination that can’t survive at all on fungus alone, they’ll be confident the genes knocked out in that strain are the ones necessary to eat the fungus. Finally, they’ll run biochemistry experiments to determine the function and mechanism of each enzyme.

From one to a billion

This kind of brute-force methodology, involving hundreds of unique strains of bacteria, highlights the advantages of working with species that multiply incredibly fast. “That’s the power of microbiology—you can go from a single cell to an overnight culture with a billion cells,” Gardner says. “You can do many, many experiments at a scale and at a speed that really isn’t possible with, say, a fly or a mouse system.”

The culmination of the project will be “identifying the enzymes, knowing what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and how well they’re doing it,” Gardner says.

The power of microbes

As a microbial researcher who cares about “interesting bits of biology that have no medical relevance at all,” Gardner says he never imagined he would receive an NIH grant to pursue work with clear biomedical implications. But as his research at UMBC over the last decade has progressed, he’s realized his work can transcend typical disciplinary boundaries. “I think that’s the exciting part, and the power of microbial systems, that you have that latitude,” Gardner says.

His first major grant from the Department of Energy focused on bacteria’s role in biofuel production. A second project funded by the National Science Foundation looks at how bacteria contribute to the carbon cycle by breaking down dead matter on the forest floor. And now, with funding from NIH, his group will look at how bacteria can help fight fungal disease. 

“If you can find an interesting bug, with some interesting physiology, the types of questions can really span major different areas,” Gardner says.

The techniques often remain the same, though. “Our wheelhouse is genetics, systems biology, and physiology,” Gardner says. In the new project, “We’re leveraging an established pipeline to work on a problem that is a step away from what we have traditionally done. We’ve got lots of tools and tricks for working with the bacteria.” 

The wide range of methods used in Gardner’s lab means that his group offers great training opportunities for students. With the new grant, Gardner is looking forward to adding two new Ph.D. students and several undergraduate researchers to his team. 

Essential support

Gardner knows, from personal experience, the importance of research training and mentorship along a scientist’s full career path, including in his time at UMBC. Before applying for this current grant, he took advantage of a program offered by UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences specifically for people seeking major NIH grants. The program, orchestrated by Phyllis Robinson, professor of biological sciences, included workshops, critique partners, and mentoring. “That was absolutely essential for my success,” Gardner says. 

Moving forward, if the project goes well and Gardner is able to secure a second round of funding in a few years, he says the next questions will be, “How do we engineer the enzymes to be more potent? How do we make them do their job of killing fungi better?” The lab could even ask which combination of enzymes would target a specific fungus most effectively, or provide the broadest protection against many fungal species.

But for now, they’ll focus on nailing down the basics, he says. “We need to find out who’s there and what they’re doing first.”

After extensive updates to assessments and grading, Ultra is expected to reach 95% feature parity by the end of spring 2023, allowing faculty to migrate their Original courses into the most current version of the Blackboard platform. As more faculty adopt Ultra, students benefit from having a single course delivery system.

"I am pretty much ready to adopt and move into that space," says Sarah Bass, lecturer of the largest Blackboard course, CHEM 101. Bass notes improvements to tests and question banks will help with the transition and adds, "I really don't see why I can't do the conversion during the Fall semester for a Spring launch."

In the last year, Ultra has seen dramatic enhancement across key functional areas, particularly assessment and grading. Now offering points-based gradebooks and points-based rubrics, robust question banks, extensive group management tools, and more, Ultra features a modern, streamlined interface that is mobile-friendly and accessible, increasing opportunities to engage students. When surveyed, 86% of UMBC students expressed satisfaction with Ultra, praising its clean design and ease of use. "Ultra makes everything really easy to find and use," says one student. "It's a major step up from the old Blackboard system."

Much of this new development comes from Blackboard's merger with Anthology, a provider of higher educational software solutions, and their triple investment of resources into Ultra. The accelerated development since October 2021 resulted in more than 100 enhancements across content, engagement, assessment, grading, and administrative areas in Ultra. DoIT tracks and shares new Ultra features each month.

Since 2018, faculty have been able to opt-in to using Ultra, resulting in 46% adoption across the entire campus. Ultra templates are used across all IHU and ENGL 100 courses. Theatre was the first department to fully adopt Ultra and more than 88% of language courses, including first year Spanish courses, and 30% of MATH/STAT courses now use Ultra. 

As Original Blackboard continues to age, Instructional Technology encourages faculty to use AY22-23 to migrate their courses to Ultra for FA2023. In addition to course migration assistance and instructional design consulting, we offer training from an extensive catalog as well as FAQs and technical support to faculty and departments for transitioning to Ultra. Additionally, faculty serve as Ultra Ambassadors, providing peer support, coordinating additional training, and sharing feedback. 

For more information about Ultra, please contact:
Dr. Mariann Hawken
Director, Instructional Technology

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Shannon Tinney Lichtinger as Director of Institutional Research in the Office of Institutional Research, Analysis and Decision Support (IRADS), effective July 21, 2022. Shannon began her career at UMBC in 2005 as a research analyst in what was then the Office of Institutional Research (OIR). During her time in OIR, she developed a reputation as a strong researcher and collaborator across campus and was lauded for the meticulous nature of her work. She left to  pursue leadership opportunities in institutional research, planning, and development at other institutions in Maryland in 2008. Shannon returned to UMBC and IRADS in spring 2019, bringing a wealth of experience gained in private and community college settings. Since 2019, she has become an integral part of the IRADS team, taking the lead or a significant role in multiple areas across the unit that support the IRADS strategic mission, as well as that of the university.

In her new position, Shannon assumes leadership responsibility for all institutional research (IR) functions in IRADS, and has a key role in department strategic planning and administration, working closely with the Associate Vice Provost of IRADS.  She represents IRADS, both internally and externally, chairing or serving on a wide range of university committees and workgroups. In addition to overseeing IR staff, Shannon also assumes the role of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE) Portal Delegate, with responsibility for campus annual reporting.

Shannon earned a B.A. from McDaniel College and an M.A. from the University of Georgia (both in Sociology), as well as a Graduate Certificate in Institutional Research from Pennsylvania State University’s Education Policy Studies program in Higher Education. She is a trained Middle States evaluator and completed the Society for College and University Planning’s (SCUP) Planning Institute. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Public Policy at UMBC. Shannon was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at McDaniel and into Phi Kappa Phi at the University of Georgia.

Shannon also engages in an impressive amount of professional and service activities. She has developed a strong reputation in the IR community, having served in various roles on the executive boards of both the Maryland Association for Institutional Research and the Northeast Association of Institutional Research (NEAIR), most recently serving as president of NEAIR from 2019-2021. At the national level she consistently volunteers with the Association of Institutional Research, and she regularly mentors students as well as newcomer and mid-career IR professionals. From 2021 to the present, she has served on the Scholarship Committee of the USM Women’s Forum, and has been the secretary for our campus chapter of the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, Chapter 22 UMB-UMBC.

Please join us in congratulating Shannon Tinney Lichtinger on this appointment and wishing her continued success in her new role at UMBC.

Antonio Moreira, Vice Provost for Academic Affairs

Constance Pierson, Associate Vice Provost for IRADS