For Brinsmade, the honor represents more than an opportunity to present his lab’s discoveries — it is a platform to mentor, connect and inspire. As part of the program, he has been connecting with institutions across the country to share his research and engage directly with students and faculty, offering guidance on research trajectories, professional development and scientific leadership.

Brinsmade has already been active in this role. Last November, he was at the Theobald Smith Society Fall 2025 Symposium, and in March, he will speak at the .

“This is an honor, recognizing his commitment to mentoring students and junior faculty members,” said , chair of the . “In Biology, we recognize his talents; this award lets others — inside and outside of the University — know about his mentoring commitments and his strong research.”

How Bacteria Works

The focuses on a fundamental question in microbiology: how bacterial pathogens decide when to produce toxins.

While bacteria are often framed as invaders, Brinsmade offers a different perspective. “We often think of bacteria as ‘out to get us,’ but they’re not,” he said. “Their goal is to multiply, to divide, to grow.”

To do that, bacteria must obtain nutrients inside the human body during infection. His lab studies “how they make the decision to turn on the synthesis of proteins or other molecules to help them forage those nutrients in the host during infection,” Brinsmade said. In short, the group investigates the regulation of toxin production and the broader mechanics of bacterial physiology.

Another focus of the lab is antibiotic resistance. “We use antibiotics to treat bacterial infections, and they’re becoming increasingly ineffective because of antibacterial resistance,” Brinsmade said. Many antibiotics target the bacterial cell membrane, which is the structure that separates the inside of the cell from the outside and is essential for survival.

Brinsmade’s team has made a recent discovery in their bacterium of interest, Staphylococcus aureus. The team found that this dangerous bacterium has a hidden backup system for building its membrane, and that discovery could help scientists design better antibiotics.

Still, Brinsmade emphasizes that his lab is fundamentally driven by curiosity and basic biology. “We try to unravel the fundamental mechanics of bacterial physiology,” he said. While new therapies would be welcome, that’s not their goal. Their main goal is to understand the biology of the organism.

Teaching Beyond the Textbook

Brinsmade is deeply committed to undergraduate and graduate education. 

“I always put the students first,” he said, whether in the classroom or the research lab.

He has taught courses including biochemistry, microbiology and mechanisms of bacterial pathogenesis. While foundational knowledge is essential, he believes undergraduate science is more than memorizing facts.

“In all these courses, you have to start somewhere … but we also expand on what we read in a textbook and look into the primary literature,” Brinsmade said. 

Students analyze journal articles written by scientists, learning not only new discoveries but “the process by which those data are obtained,” he said. As Brinsmade puts it, “you actually learn about doing science at the same time that you’re learning about the science.”

He finds that excitement in the classroom can be infectious. 

Students often “get excited about learning a new technique, or learning about a new discovery… and they become curious,” Brinsmade said.

The Importance of Mentorship

Mentorship, for Brinsmade, is central to both his career and his identity as a scientist. His lab includes trainees from the United States but also from countries all over the world, including Brazil, Colombia, Peru and Korea. 

He approaches mentoring as individualized work. 

“Everybody is different,” Brinsmade said. “There’s not a one-size-fits-all.” Each trainee requires “a bespoke experience,” he added, shaped by their goals, background and aspirations.

He acknowledges that becoming a good mentor is an ongoing process. “I’ve learned by making mistakes. Nobody’s perfect,” he said. Mentoring, he believes, is more of a practice, because “you’re always learning something new.”

His commitment to holistic evaluation stems from his own experience. As a student, he described himself as “not a very good standardized test taker,” and his standardized testing scores were “average at best.”

“There’s more to a person than a test score,” he said. Because others gave him a chance, he strives to do the same for his students.

Finding Your Advocates

Brinsmade also sees the Distinguished Lecturer role as a platform for representation. “Anybody can be a scientist,” he said. As someone who identifies as LGBTQ, he hopes that visibility matters. By traveling, giving lectures and sharing his story, he hopes others will see themselves in science.

“We don’t hear much about those scientists who identify as LGBTQ,” he said. “If someone sees me and says, ‘I can also be just like Professor Brinsmade,’ then that’s important.”

When asked what message he would share with Georgetown students, his advice was direct: “Take advantage of the opportunities that are available to you. You never know where they’ll lead you.”

He also encourages students to seek mentors, even multiple ones. “There’s not one person that can be a mentor for every aspect of your life,” he said. Instead, “surround yourselves with mentors and people that are going to support you and advocate for you, and they will help you achieve your dreams.”

Through the ASM Distinguished Lecturer program, Brinsmade will share his lab’s discoveries with audiences nationwide. Just as importantly, he will continue modeling the inclusive, curiosity-driven science that defines his work and demonstrate that excellence in research and dedication to mentorship go hand in hand.

Established by the ������̳ Academic Council in honor of Chester Gillis, the dean of the ������̳ from 2008 to 2017, the annual award recognizes and celebrates up to two students who embody the values of a liberal arts education rooted in the Jesuit tradition.

“Our students are extraordinary, and this award is an opportunity to highlight two who exemplify the values at the heart of a Georgetown education,” said advising dean . “Their service and commitment to the community here on campus is a jumping off point for the change they will go on to make in the wider world, as people for others.”

This summer, Shah moved to Hawaii to begin his training as a teacher with Teach for America, and Sun is conducting research in the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health.

Naveen Shah (C’25)

A week after Shah graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in government and computer science in May, he hopped on a one-way flight to O’ahu, Hawaii. Once he arrived, he spent several weeks training to be a middle school math and science teacher with Teach for America and has been using his free time to explore O’ahu before the school year begins.

When Shah thinks of teaching, he recalls his favorite Georgetown motto: cura personalis, or care of the whole person. 

“There is a great deal of research on the importance of social-emotional learning, or a more holistic approach to instruction which aims to strengthen students’ capabilities to manage their own emotions, relationships and develop confidence in their own decision-making abilities,” Shah said. “My goal is to grow students in this dimension while maintaining rigor with academics, in the spirit of cura personalis.”

At Georgetown, Shah was involved in several extracurricular activities. He started working with the nonprofit Hatch Tutors the fall of his first year and is still contributing to the tutoring organization. Shah is currently re-designing the backend software that helps match students with tutors. 

Shah also joined the ������̳ Academic Council, which he served for four years, and as a first-year student. 

During the spring semester of his first year, he traveled with the team to the national championships at the United States Tennis Association National Campus in Orlando, Florida. There, he met two representatives from ACEing Autism, a nonprofit organization providing sports related intervention for children with autism. It inspired Shah to start an ACEing Autism program .

As a junior, Shah spent five months as a teaching assistant for the data structures course in the Department of Computer Science.

“I appreciate the Chester Gillis Award as a recognition of the impact work I have done during my time at Georgetown,” Shah said.  

Harry Sun (C’26)

This summer, Sun, a biology major and philosophy minor, is researching immune cell interactions and their implications on tumor immunity at the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center at UConn Health.

The research is extremely personal for Sun. He recently lost his mother to cancer.

“I am still emotionally processing everything, along with my siblings and relatives overseas,” he said.

Sun takes pride in the breadth and depth of his research and hopes to carry it forward for others. He said that receiving the Chester Gillis Award has allowed him time to reflect on the Jesuit values that encourage intellectual curiosity, justice and a commitment to others.

“The Jesuit values of cura personalis and has taken me to diverse realms as a lab researcher and nursing home volunteer, the latter of which I’ve spent summer weekends teaching word games and playing piano for residents,” Sun said. “Cura personalis has also informed my role as a caregiver for my recently passed mom, teaching me to reconcile moments at the hospital with her with emotional conversations at home.”

Sun’s academic program in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences has largely framed the research he does. His biology major has informed his love for immunology and his philosophy minor challenges him to take other perspectives, predict counterarguments and consider the underlying ethics of future therapies, he said.

At Georgetown, Sun volunteers as a first responder with . He has also held leadership roles in , working as the head of purchasing and connecting with distributors and local minority-owned businesses to expand campus offerings.

The summer after Sun’s first year, he began working in a lab at UConn Health, and that fall, he joined the lab of , a professor of oncology and pharmacology at Georgetown’s School of Medicine and a member of the . Sun currently studies cancer immunology at Wellstein’s lab and neuroimmunology at the Jin Lab in the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which is a part of the National Institutes of Health. 

Sun’s goal is to ultimately build novel treatments for cancer patients like his mom, he said.

After graduating from Georgetown, Sun plans to enroll in an MD/Ph.D.program. He is also interested in exploring research opportunities abroad to further his understanding of tumor immunology and cancer immunotherapy.

“To me, the Jesuit tradition is like a veil through which the world unravels, shedding light on the goals I feel inspired towards and how I can best pursue them,” Sun said.

(Top photo of Harry Sun by Tiffany Pham)

In Shark Bay, Western Australia, a small group of Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins use basket-shaped marine sponges as tools to hunt camouflaged fish hidden along the seafloor. While tool use has been observed in a variety of animal species, this behavior — known as “sponging” — is exceptional in its complexity, exclusivity and method of cultural transmission.

Led by , a postdoctoral student at Aarhus University in Denmark who received her Ph.D. in biology from the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences last year, the international team of researchers used finite-element modeling to simulate how sponge tools affect dolphin echolocation — a key sensory system used for hunting and navigation. They found that the presence of the sponge significantly distorts the acoustic signals dolphins emit and receive, challenging their ability to detect prey using sonar.

“Sponging doesn’t just require finding, detaching and physically manipulating the tool — it demands that dolphins compensate for altered sensory input every time they use a sponge,” Jacobs said. “This makes the behavior cognitively demanding and difficult to master, which helps explain why it’s passed down almost exclusively from mother to calf.”

The study found that different sponge species impact sonar distortion in unique ways, and the most commonly used sponge, Echinodictyum mesenterinum, appears to interfere less with echolocation than other species of sponges, potentially influencing sponge choice. Despite frequent contact with non-tool using dolphins, no dolphin outside of the sponging matrilines has adopted the practice, underscoring how both biological and social constraints shape cultural learning in the wild.

“We have been studying sponge-tool use for over three decades and knew that it was a difficult technique to learn, potentially explaining why only offspring of spongers picked it up, but this work demonstrates the additional challenges of sponge tool-use and why primarily females engage in the behavior,” said , senior author of the study who is a professor of biology and psychology in the ������̳ of Arts & Sciences. “While sponge-tool use is clearly advantageous, spongers have to overcome the distortions introduced by the sponge — a bit like wearing the wrong prescription eyeglasses. Other dolphins occasionally acquire a sponge and try it out, but apparently just once. A calf would be exposed to thousands of hours of maternal sponging, and thus learns how to hunt effectively with this unusual technique.” 

The research adds a critical piece to the puzzle of animal culture, revealing how ecological challenges and sensory processing interact to constrain the spread of learned behaviors. It also highlights the sophisticated cognitive abilities of dolphins as they navigate the physical and sensory demands of life in the wild.

(Top image of a bottlenose dolphin named Whopper by Meredith MacQueeney, courtesy of the Shark Bay Dolphin Research Project)

Contact:
Ellen Jacobs
Georgetown University and Aarhus University
Email: erj22@georgetown.edu

Janet Mann
Department of Biology, Georgetown University
Email: mannj2@georgetown.edu

Paper citation:
Jacobs E, Wei C, Erbe C, Mann J. (2025) Cultural transmission of animal tool use driven by trade-offs: insights from sponge-using dolphins. Royal Society Open Science, 12: 241900.

A pre-medical student majoring in biology, Zhang had already completed all of her required biology coursework and felt it was time to dive deeper into her other passion: music.

She emailed her advising dean, , with a bold plan that she now calls her “greatest academic risk.” Zhang declared a second major in , Georgetown’s only .

“I knew this was probably the last chance that I would have, not just with the musical equipment, but also with a community of musicians I could draw from and all the classes that I wanted to take,” she said.

The decision – and the support she received from her Georgetown mentors – shifted something in Zhang. She realized she did not have to choose between passions. After graduation, Zhang plans to explore opportunities in both medicine and music. 

“It was the first time I fully embraced how much music meant to me,” she said. “Georgetown supported my growth not only as a student, but as a whole person. Because in the end, no matter how different my passions may seem, they’ve always been in conversation with each other.”

Finding Her Voice

Growing up in Middlebury, Connecticut, as the daughter of immigrants from Beijing and the first in her family to attend college in the U.S., Zhang was deeply influenced by both music and science.

She began playing the piano as a toddler with her parents’ encouragement and later taught herself to sing and play the guitar. Singing gave Zhang a voice she didn’t realize she had.

“It was a crazy way of bringing me out of my shell,” Zhang said. “In pre-K, I was the most shy child ever, and I was so afraid to talk to anybody that my teachers tried to fail me. … But when I started singing around when I was 9, I noticed how drastically it affected who I was. It built a core part of my personality, because most people who know me now know I’m very loud and outgoing.”

Zhang’s interest in biology and medicine stems largely from witnessing her mother undergo chemotherapy twice. Her mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer when Zhang was in elementary school, and again with ovarian cancer during her junior year of high school. She is now cancer-free.

Zhang has worked in an ovarian cancer research lab at Yale School of Medicine since high school and plans to pursue a career in oncology. She chose Georgetown in part because of its wide range of research opportunities and proximity to and the .

During her time on the Hilltop, Zhang worked as a clinical research assistant at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center, where she interviewed cancer patients and survivors to explore the relationship between diet and symptom severity.

Zhang, who has a concentration in , also served as a student academic assistant for the biology department – an experience that she said gave her “a strong sense of purpose in giving back to students who were in the same position I once was.”

“She was incredibly social with all the students and put them at ease,” said , an associate teaching professor of biology. “Students trusted her, as did we.”

After graduation, Zhang will take a gap year before attending medical school. She will continue working in her ovarian cancer cell lab at Yale and serve as a medical assistant at a local hospital in Connecticut.

“It has always been clear to me that Tiffany knows who she is and puts incredible effort towards her interests and her people,” said , an assistant teaching professor of biology. “I simply adore her vibrance, creativity and ability to be unabashedly herself.”

The Value of Persistence

Unlike in science, where Zhang confidently navigated her pre-med curriculum, she said she felt like a “complete impostor” in her American musical cultures classes. 

Her senior fall course load consisted of music industry seminar, rock history, songwriting and composition, the art of improvisation and recording arts. During introductions in her first class, she found herself surrounded by students with industry connections or who had grown up in recording studios. 

“The first day I entered , I thought I had mistakenly wandered into a foreign language course,” Zhang said. 

Her love for music has continually taught her the value of persistence.

Zhang auditioned every year in high school for the all-girls a cappella group, only to be rejected each time. And in her first year at Georgetown, she faced six more rejections before finally being accepted to , a co-ed a cappella group on campus.

“It wasn’t just a testament to resilience and getting back up after repeated setbacks – it was the moment I found my people,” Zhang said. 

Shortly after declaring her second major, Zhang came up with what she describes as a “joyfully reckless, wildly ambitious idea” for her music capstone project. It was something she had dreamed of since she began writing music at 12 years old but never had the tools or space to realize. Zhang wanted to create a fully self-produced extended play album featuring her own original compositions.

Zhang spent hours in Georgetown’s “swelteringly hot” recording studio. 

Last month, she completed and presented her capstone project, Roots, an EP of six tracks, four originals, all of which she arranged, recorded, mixed and mastered herself. The album explores themes of personal growth and connections with others. 

“I didn’t just grow technically. I grew as a listener, collaborator and storyteller,” Zhang said. “I had to learn to trust my creative instincts, sit with discomfort, stay open and put myself out there enough to collaborate meaningfully with other musicians.”

, an associate professor of music and a Grammy-nominated composer, described Zhang’s writing as “honest and transparent.”

For , a professor of music and chair of the Department of Performing Arts, Zhang’s journey exemplifies the courage in pursuing passions.

“I think what Tiffany demonstrates is that you don’t need to have all of your musical skills fully formed to commit to something. She finished a major within a year, and she finished it successfully,” Harbert said. “I think Tiffany shows us that it’s never too late.”

The Other Side of Risk

For a long time, Zhang feared music would pull her away from her pre-medical studies and scientific work. That pursuing one passion meant abandoning the other.

Something that one of her music professors, , told her helped shift her perspective. “Music doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” he said. “It is inevitably shaped by everything else you’ve ever loved.”

Zhang’s greatest academic risk led her to the freedom of fully being herself. 

In addition to her medical school plans, Zhang will be an artist-in-residence at the Harold Leever Cancer Center and nearby senior centers. There, she will perform music for patients and continue exploring music’s healing potential in clinical spaces. She also plans to scout out recording studios and small venues across Connecticut to keep creating music and performing. 

“My Georgetown experience often felt like gazing into a reflective pool. Whatever intention I brought to the surface was reflected back to me,” Zhang said. “I learned that if I pursue something – intellectually, creatively or personally – with genuine effort and authenticity, no matter how hard and uncomfortable it is in the moment, I could make it real.”