Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) Computational Scientist Jason McDermott received his PhD in microbiology and immunology from Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Today he remains connected to his alma mater through the PNNL and OHSU joint research collaboration Pacific northwest bioMedical Innovation Co-laboratory (PMedIC). McDermott has a joint appointment with OHSU as an adjunct professor, and he is the education outreach coordinator on the PMedIC core team.

“Building stronger connections with an institution that I'm very familiar with and exposing graduate students to the national laboratory system has been really rewarding,” said McDermott.

PMedIC is working to improve human health and treatment of diseases by generating, interpreting, and integrating multi-dimensional data, imaging, and clinical results to understand diseases better and develop innovative therapies.

“I started out my career in the biomedical sciences area working in infectious diseases and cancer and have since moved into the Department of Energy space where I'm looking at soil microbiomes to enhance crop growth and for bioenergy applications,” said McDermott. “I use computational methods to address biological problems, whether that's development of new algorithms, data analysis, or interpretation of large data that comes from our mass-spectrometry capabilities.”

OHSU students often take on internships at PNNL to learn and complete research for PMedIC projects.

Justine Nguyen, an OHSU PhD candidate in informatics, interned with McDermott during her master’s program exploring computational methods for predicting protein function.

“I'm really interested in pushing our biological knowledge and understanding basic biological questions, like why proteins interact with each other.”

Research from the internship transferred to her graduate work and dissertation.

“The computational biomedicine research that Jason and I were working on during my internship was really interesting," said Nguyen. “My thesis stems from that collaboration and is focused on applying computer science to model proteins to better understand how they're behaving and predict how they’re functioning.”

McDermott remains connected to Nguyen as a mentor and member of her thesis committee.

“It’s difficult to encapsulate how integral he's been in my scientific journey,” said Nguyen. “He is someone I go to for advice and mentorship.”

McDermott is also serving on the thesis committee of another OHSU student.

“At PMedIC, we get to combine PNNL’s fundamental science and biomedical research with OHSU faculty and clinicians’ resources and skills to potentially translate the work we do to clinics,” said McDermott. “We also get to introduce bright and excited students to the national lab system, many of whom don’t know that exists for biomedical research and expose them to careers as a research scientist. Together, this can be really impactful.”

Beyond internships, the PMedIC team encourages OHSU students in biomedicine at a yearly Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Retreat, OHSU Research Week, and in classroom presentations and lunches designed for students to network with faculty and staff and learn about current research and training opportunities.

PNNL Biomedical Scientist Jennifer Kyle, a joint appointee with OHSU, has been working with PMedIC since it was founded in 2018. Her research is focused on lipids, or fat, and how they help the body respond to disease including cancer and viral infection. She currently teaches a class in Research Models and Methodology, a requirement for PhD students at OHSU.

Kyle is invested in creating opportunities for students to collaborate with researchers in the national laboratory system. She recently met with students from the Molecular Microbiology and Immunology Department at OHSU to represent research careers at national laboratories. She has also assisted two PhD students with writing proposals to utilize the technologies and methods developed at PNNL for their PhD research.

“It was really interesting to talk to students about national labs and the types of resources we have access to and opportunities available to our future scientists,” said Kyle.

Since 2018, Kyle has also worked closely with OHSU Associate Professor of Molecular Microbiology Fikadu Tafesse and his graduate students on different virus-related research. Three of the students have since attained their PhD. Each of the PhD students published joint PNNL and OHSU publications as lead authors. Two of the papers, focused on profiling and understanding the roles of lipids during a virus infection, were published in the journal Nature.

Tafesse said, “Collaborating with our colleagues at PNNL has profoundly impacted our research by providing access to cutting-edge technologies and a rich diversity of expertise. Working on these projects has been an excellent training opportunity for our students, equipping them with unique skills that are crucial for their future success.”