American magazine, July 2016

giving
AU has already invested in the sciences in
the form of the new Don Myers Technology
and Innovation Building, which will house the
computer science, physics, and mathematics
and statistics departments; the AU Game
Lab; and the Kogod School of Business
Entrepreneurship Incubator. The university
is deep in the planning stages for a new life
sciences building that would boast faculty
labs, offices, and classrooms, and enable AU
scientists to conduct experiments they can’t
currently undertake.
“The building is designed by faculty to be
optimal for collaborations and flexibility,” says
U. J. Sofia, the College of Arts and Sciences’
associate dean of research. “The new building
will have lab suites where multiple faculty are
in the same room working at lab benches that
are adjacent to each other. This leads to crosspollination
of ideas among faculty and students.
We expect the students working in these labs
to also benefit greatly from interactions with
faculty other than their own research mentor,
and with students from other research groups.”
The project is vital not just for the future
of AU, but for the good of the entire planet.
“Our global problems are not going to be
solved by one individual field; they demand
interdisciplinary approaches,” Saldanha says.
“The problems that we’re going to be dealing
with as a people for the next 200 years are
scientific. Climate change is less a lawyer’s
domain. Antibiotic resistance is not strictly a
business school question. We need to prepare
our students to understand the science
behind the policies that we are going to have
to put into place.”
FOR INFORMATION on how you can support
big ideas happening in the sciences at AU, contact
Elizabeth Harless, assistant dean of development,
at 202-885-5907 or harless@american.edu.
Nicole Bonan’s interest
in highly metastatic
squamous cell carcinoma
(SCC)—a type of skin
cancer that affects a disproportionately large number
of organ transplant patients—isn’t just academic.
It’s personal.
Bonan’s mother, Pat, was diagnosed with a rare
form of SCC in 2008. (Bonan’s father is also a cancer
survivor.) By the time she was in eighth grade, the
Potomac, Maryland, resident knew she wanted to “help
people with cancer beat the disease more quickly and
less painfully.”
“The problem we’re
working on is very
complex and you
can attack it in
lots of ways. It
involves research,
creative thinking,
and lots of logical
next steps.”
—Nicole Bonan, CAS/BS ’16
“Whether I can actually help to find a cure or
just find what doesn’t work, I hope my results will
help to advance the field of cancer research,”
Bonan, CAS/BS ’16, says.
In 2014 Bonan was awarded the Gloria A. Likins
Scholarship, established in 2008 by the estate of Likins,
CAS/BA ’60, to support undergrads—preferably women—
majoring in biology or chemistry. For the last two years,
Bonan worked alongside her mentor and confidante,
Professor Katie DeCicco-Skinner, studying drugs that
inhibit c-Met, a receptor that exists on the surface
of skin cells and is associated with cell proliferation
and invasion.
“The problem we’re working on is very complex
and you can attack it in lots of ways,” Bonan says. “It
involves research, creative thinking, and lots of logical
next steps.”
Bonan graduated in May with a degree in biochemistry—
but she’s not done with AU just yet. She’s pursuing a
master’s in biology and will be spending her summer in
DeCicco-Skinner’s lab.
When you’re working on serious real-world problems,
there’s no time for vacation.
AMERICAN.EDU/ALUMNI 47