Jennifer Harrell has earned the 2025 Shi/Ma Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research at Missouri S&T. The winner is granted a $1,000 award in recognition of their contributions to the field of biomedical research.

Harrell, a Ph.D. student in biological sciences from Union, Missouri, is researching sleep patterns in wildland fire dispatchers by applying insights from fruit fly sleep studies. Her faculty advisor is Dr. Matthew Thimgan, associate professor of biological sciences at S&T.

Harrell’s research has two parts to it: validating mathematical models to identify underlying mechanisms in sleep health and predicting cognitive performance based on sleep patterns with data from wildland fire dispatchers.

“Inadequate sleep promotes several diseases that reduce lifespan, leading us to hypothesize that there must be a general underlying mechanism affected by sleep,” says Harrell. “To discover this mechanism, our interdisciplinary team has developed unique mathematical models to predict lifespan in chronologically identical Drosophila melanogaster – the common fruit fly – based on their sleep characteristics.”

Harrell says that diseases such as proteostasis, oxidative stress and energy homeostasis are all associated with aging and thus make sense to pursue first in lifespan model validation.

So far, she has successfully validated the research team’s mathematical models and is now employing a variety of biomolecular techniques to identify underlying mechanisms by conducting tests such as screening thousands of metabolites and lipids at once with mass spectrometry imaging.

“Our research, if successful, will further clarify the mechanism behind sleep and how it affects health,” says Harrell. “More importantly, our research could yield targets for intervention that are translatable to human medicine.”

Her work with wildland fire dispatchers involves attempting to predict cognitive performance based on sleep patterns. Her team has collected data via survey and various performance tests from workers at Mark Twain National Forest in Rolla, Missouri, and the Cleveland National Forest in San Diego.

“Preliminary data analysis on this is promising,” says Harrell. “We have identified significant correlations between a variety of sleep characteristics and performance.”

The Shi/Ma Award for Excellence in Biomedical Research was established by Dr. Honglan Shi, a research professor emeritus of chemistry at S&T, and her husband, Dr. Yinfa Ma, a Curators’ Distinguished Professor emeritus of chemistry at S&T.

To be eligible for the award, students must be enrolled in a degree program within the College of Arts, Sciences, and Education, and be actively engaged in biomedical research. The students had to submit a two-page essay detailing their research endeavors, along with a recommendation from their faculty advisor.

About Missouri S&T

Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) is a STEM-focused research university of over 7,000 students located in Rolla, Missouri. Part of the four-campus University of Missouri System, Missouri S&T offers over 100 degrees in 40 areas of study and is among the nation’s top public universities for salary impact, according to the Wall Street Journal. For more information about Missouri S&T, visit www.mst.edu.