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“One of the things I love about Lafayette is that students here are not competing with grad students for faculty attention,” says Erin Muller, a senior biochemistry major from Riverton, Conn., and a graduate of Northwestern Regional High School Number 7. “Here we get one-on-one contact with professors. If I want to do research all I have to do is take the initiative, because the faculty can’t wait to work with you.”
The lives of 300 million people throughout the Third World may someday be healthier thanks to the research of Marquis Scholar Erin Muller.
Muller is pursuing departmental honors in biochemistry. Under the direction of Bernard Fried, the Kreider Professor of Biology, and Joseph A. Sherma, the Larkin Professor of Chemistry, she’s researching the role of lipids, or fats, in mice that have been infected with the parasite Schistosoma mansoni.
“The flatworm parasite causes serious disease in many people, mostly in Third World countries, Africa, India, the Far East — anywhere where there is tainted water,” Fried explains.
“Some 2 to 3 million people die each year from Schistosoma. Highly infectious, the worm-like body of the larva gets into the blood vessel travels in circulation and works its way into the liver and intestinal tract. The parasite breeds constantly and the result is destruction of the internal organs,” Fried says. “By identifying lipids and how the liver becomes fatty, and the fatty degeneration which is the consequence of the parasite, Erin is helping us better understand the disease and helping us work long term toward a solution.”
Muller’s project is truly international. She’s working with, Laura Rosa-Brunet, a 1991 Lafayette graduate who is at Cambridge University in England.
“The mice are being infected with the parasite by Dr. Rosa-Brunet,” says Muller. “She will send the samples to me and I will perform the high-performance thin-layer chromatographic analysis on them to see if there is a difference between the neutral lipid and phospholipid concentrations in infected and uninfected mouse liver, gut, and plasma samples.”
Sherma says, “There is an excitement from seeing Lafayette students working together, a sense of continuity in seeing a former student help guide a current student.”
Having worked with Muller since her sophomore year, both Fried and Sherma speak of her work in glowing terms.
“She is tremendous, probably is one of the top five students I’ve had,” Sherma says. “She is very independent, and when it comes to mentoring newer students, she is so wonderful. She is just a terrific, capable student.”
“Erin is a rare student,” echoes Fried. “We’ve become very close to her over the years. She is one of the finest students you could have, in that special top percentile of gifted students.”
Muller is excited about co-authoring six articles in professional journals with Fried and Sherma. In some cases, she is given lead author status, indicating her lead role in the research.
“The publishing has also been good for my writing skills because I’ve learned that research is useless unless you are able to convey your ideas to other scientists,” she says.
“One of the things I love about Lafayette is that students here are not competing with grad students for attention from faculty,” Muller says. “Here we get one-on-one contact with professors. If I want to do research all I have to do is take the initiative, because the faculty can’t wait to work with you.”
Another Side of Erin
She is vice president of the Lafayette chapter of the American Chemical Society and president of the student organization called LEAD, or Lafayette Education on Alcohol and Drugs, whose purpose is to inform people about the effects of alcohol and drugs and spread a message about responsible use of alcohol. The head resident advisor for Watson Hall and Blair Hall, she co-chaired the committee for the Admissions Office’s “Experience Lafayette” program for perspective students.