From High School Teacher to Scientific Trailblazer: Dr. Spaulding Named First Endowed Chair at MDI Bio Lab
$2 Million Donation Establishes the George Wojtech Chair in Neurobiology at MDI Bio Lab
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by The Witham Family Hotels Charitable Fund.
SALSBURY COVE—For Assistant Professor Emily Spaulding, Ph.D. becoming MDI Biological Laboratory’s first endowed faculty chair, thanks to a generous gift from an anonymous donor, might seem like something she’d never dreamed of.
She’s still a little bit shocked by her journey into biomedical research.
“I think that shows you never know where you'll end up when you start up which is something we always tell our students: it's okay to change your mind,” Spaulding told an audience at a recent lab event.
The world is benefitting from Dr. Spaulding’s own change of mind and switch in careers that has led to her impact on understanding the mechanisms that drive neurodegenerative diseases.
“The MDI Biological Laboratory is establishing its first endowed faculty chair, thanks to a generous gift from an anonymous donor. The George Wojtech Chair in Neurobiology is named for a New Jersey resident who displayed enormous courage and spirit through a long battle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS),” the lab announced in a press release on Monday.
The lab continued, “The $2 million endowment provides essential funding for identifying new therapeutic approaches to the treatment and prevention of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and Alzheimer's. With support from the Laboratory’s Board of Trustees, Hermann Haller, M.D., MDI Bio Lab’s president appointed Assistant Professor Emily Spaulding, Ph.D., as the recipient of the new funding.”
She’s humbled, Dr. Spaulding said, by both the gift and the donor’s belief in both her work and the need for her work. It’s work that’s especially significant to her because her favorite high school teacher was diagnosed with ALS.
Impacting more than 200,000 people worldwide, there is currently no cure for ALS. Treatment options are few.
“And the types of physiological disruptions that contribute to ALS are often seen in other neurodegenerative diseases, such as Parkinson’s, Huntington’s, and Alzheimer’s,” the lab wrote.
All of these disorders affect millions of lives.
“The potential that you can really impact someone’s life is really what keeps us coming to the lab every day,” Dr. Spaulding said.
That potential continues because of the endowed gift.
“Our entire community is honored and humbled by this gift,” Dr. Haller said. “As we move further into the laboratory's second century, it’s a gesture of great confidence in the laboratory’s future as a center for biomedical discovery, and it will make a difference in the future of human health.”
Dr. Spaulding is originally from Maine and has been breaking ground when it comes to understanding the “genesis of neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS. Still early in her career, she has published research and technically advanced imaging that upended some conventional thinking about the inner workings of the cell,” the lab said.
She’s published in the journals: Science, Nature Communications, Journal of Neuroscience, and others; new research was published in Genetics last month.
“The one question is just what drives neurodegenerative disease. That’s the grand question,” she said of her lab’s work.
Her lab’s niche is using a tiny worm that has many practical advantages to studying.
“It may sound crazy to try to understand a human disease in a worm, but these worms have so many advantages,” Dr. Spaulding said.
Those worms are optically clear in all stages of their three-week lifespan. Scientists like Dr. Spaulding can peer into their cells. Obviously, that can’t be done with a mouse or a human.
“It’s really a powerful animal for biomedical research,” she said. The short lifecycle also has scientific advantages. “We can look at aged worms. Many degenerative diseases are associated with older age.”
The transparent worm, C. elegans, according to the press release, allows Dr. Spaulding’s lab “to pursue innovative research on an intricately organized structure of the inner cell called the ‘nucleolus’ that, when disrupted, contributes to degenerative diseases. Revealing how the normal mechanisms of nucleolar organization can go awry will inform the search for therapies that prevent or repair the damage that causes neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS.”
“Rigorous and innovative research can’t happen without talented and motivated scientists such as Dr. Spaulding. As MDI Bio Lab works to grow its capacity for cutting-edge research, this new investment will support its neuroscientists’ pursuit of their own paths of discovery, with the goal of eliminating the threat of diseases such as ALS,” the press release says.
“We know that providing smart, innovative people with state-of-the-art technology and the resources needed to freely explore new ideas is a foundation for world-changing biomedical science,” Dr. Haller said.
He continued, “Establishing endowed faculty positions such as this provides stable, long-term funding needed to attract and retain outstanding scientists, accelerate discoveries and make life better for those we love.”
DR. SPAULDING’S JOURNEY
Part of what makes Dr. Spaulding’s story so compelling is that she took chances and opportunities to end up in her field.
“I am a Mainer. I grew up in Rockland and I definitely was not aware of biomedical research as a kid or even in high school,” Dr. Spaulding said.
Instead, she gravitated more toward literature and history. She went to college in Boston, Massachusetts. “I was very undecided; I didn’t have a good plan as a freshman.”
One of the college’s core requirements was a science class and she loved it.
Dr. Spaulding explained, “I just really liked how evidenced based it was and that really appealed to me.”
She still didn’t think of biomedical research as a career. During a summer in India, she ended up volunteer teaching rather than volunteering in a hospital, which had been the original plan that was foiled by a bit of a communication glitch between the program and the hospital. After that, she took a pause on the medical path. She liked teaching and Dr. Spaulding ended up falling into a teaching position right after college, teaching biology at high school.
“I really loved it,” she said and she took Master’s in Education classes at night while teaching in the day so that she would be qualified as a teacher.
That began a six-year career teaching in high school. Eventually, she and her family moved back to Maine where she taught in Bangor at Bangor Christian School.
“Teaching at a private school had its benefits because in my fourth year of teaching this opportunity came up for me to do a research institute at Jackson Laboratory,” she said.
Teachers were allowed sabbaticals to participate in the program.
That program was designed to give teachers real life experience in research that most science educators don’t have. She enrolled thinking that it would make her a better teacher in the long run. She ended up working with Dr. Rob Burgess who was working on Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, which is an inherited grouping of neurological disorders.
“I worked in the basement of JAX,” she said of the Jackson Laboratory time. For a semester she worked there on an electron microscope, studying the muscle tissues of mice. “I was so intimidated before I started this internship. By the end, I was able to contribute to a scientific publication. That just really boosted my confidence. I was so intrigued by what his lab was working on; they were trying to understand what drives this disease. I just absolutely loved it.”
She taught one more year, brought students back to JAX to collaborate, applied for graduate school in Biomedical Sciences and Engineering at the University of Maine, attended, and went back to Burgess’ lab to complete her Ph.D. and the rest was history.
“My project was to go after that disease mechanism,” Dr. Spaulding said, that makes the disease happen.
She left in 2019 and did post doctorate work with Dr. Dustin Updyke at MDI Biological Laboratory. Now it was nematodes she was working with and not mice. And they studied something really relevant to neurodegenerative disease: the biology of nucleolin (a protein encoded by the NCL gene) and how when it’s disruptive, it contributes to the impact of those diseases.
TEACHING AND SCIENCE COMING TOGETHER
Running a lab requires a lot of teaching skills as well since Dr. Spaulding works with interns and undergraduates. High school students also come into the lab.
“Mentoring them through a research experience is really rewarding,” Dr. Spaulding said.
Passing the love of learning and passing it on to another generation is something “I didn’t have to give up,” she added.
“Who hasn’t had a personal experience with someone whose had neurodegenerative disease?” she asked. “The potential that you can really impact someone’s life is what brings us coming to the lab every day.”
She tells her students that finding support and taking opportunities is important, stressing how supportive the scientific communities are.
The lab is part of IDeA Network of Biomedical Research Excellence (INBRE), hosts lectures, programs and learning opportunities constantly. Students, interns, and families are constantly hosted on the campus.
THE SUPPORTIVE COMMUNITY
The supportive community has been a key factor for Dr. Spaulding starting her own lab at the Salsbury Cove campus. She said she’s grateful for that chance.
“You have to be willing to take opportunities but also the opportunities have to be there. The Maine medical scene is so supportive. These grants have been designed to really strengthen the Maine biomedical network and have made such an impact on me, personally, and I would never be here without that program,” Dr. Spaulding said.
The programs like INBRE have funded her lab and allowed her to jump from JAX to the MDI Bio Lab. Those opportunities, she said, were put there by the people who came before her.
“The environment here at MDIBL, it truly is very supportive. This is the reason that I’m here,” she said.
“It goes even beyond the scientists. This endowed chair was given by a very generous, anonymous donor who believes in the mission of MDIBL, who believes in the importance of biomedical research and who had, like many of us, a personal tie to neurodegenerative disease, specifically to ALS, with their dear friend,” Dr. Spaulding said. “This was just a really generous way to honor this person’s friend and to support biomedical research related to ALS. It’s just another incredible example of how supportive the community is on MDI towards biomedical research. That just really blew us away to know we have support like that and to have people who believe in us, who believe in MDIBL and believe in my lab is incredible.”
MORE ABOUT THE BIO LAB
According to its website, “MDI Biological Laboratory is a non-profit, international hub for the study of aging, regeneration and environmental health. Our state-of-the-art facilities support 10 research groups whose faculty and students are pushing the frontiers of biomedical science.”
The institute's 2025 Annual Meeting of the Corporation is set for this Thursday, July 24, starting at 10 a.m. and includes a presentation from Dr. Haller on the exciting projects and plans that will shape the future of MDI Bio Lab.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
MDIBL website.
Dr. Spaulding’s page.
To learn about careers at the lab.
What a Tiny Worm Tells Us About Human PregnancyBlog · November 15, 2024
Guiding Growth: The Role of Mentorship in Advancing Biological Science Careers Blog · September 16, 2024
The INBRE Effect Publication · 2024
The Following Two Images are Paid Content From The Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce Thanking Its Sponsors and Partners for Independence Day
Follow us on Facebook. And as a reminder, you can easily view all our past stories and press releases here.
If you’d like to donate to help support us, you can, but no pressure! Just click here (about how you can give) or here (a direct link), which is the same as the button below.
If you’d like to sponsor the Bar Harbor Story, you can! Learn more here.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING OUR COMMITMENT TO YOUR COMMUNITY