USD President's Report and Honor Roll of Donors 1995

Elizabeth Hirst Bruns '66 has found her career in biological and chemical research to be rewarding, both personally and professionall y. Perhaps that's not surprising when considering that a different type of reward got her involved in chemistry in the first place. "I attended the Academy of the Sacred Heart in El Cajon (Calif.). and the Sacred Heart nuns there thought it was important for girls to like chemistry," she recalls. "They had rewards for students who got good grades in subjects such as chemistry. and they encouraged the girls to excel in the sciences." The nuns who taught chemistry to Bruns during high school and her later years at the University of San Diego would be proud to know that their encouragement put her , on a pioneering career path in the field of biochemistry. A nationally and internationally recognized expert in human ' endocrinology. the study of human glands. Bruns has : authored 52 publications in her 25-year career. serves on the ·editorial boards of major journals and has received more than a dozen research grants from organizations such as the National Institutes of Health. But she's most excited about her current work. which has far-reaching implications for understanding human pregnancy. "We're working with a new hormone that's never oeen described before in human pregnancy," says Bruns. a research associate professor in both pathology and obstetrics/gynecology for the University of Virginia Medical School. "We're trying to get some ideas about how a aeficiency in this hormone may lead to premature birth." Although Bruns describes her current area of work as "so vast I could work on it until I retire," she sometimes gets siaetracked into other areas that prove beneficial. At one P.Oint her research team developed a new tool for their own study - an antibody - which turned out to have imP.lications for the fields of brain and tumor physiology. Such discoveries are part of what Bruns finds satisfying in lier work, as she's always been keen on working with the meaical side of her field. :"Endocrinology was appealing to me because it offered tlie opportunity for M.D.s and Ph.D.s to work together," sne says. "So much of the time we're separated. but in this area of medical research there's a lot of give and take 1:ietween the two." Collaboration between medical doctors and those with aoctorates is something Bruns speaks about from experience. iflie co-author on almost half of her publications is her liusl:i~nd of 26 years. David. a medical doctor. 'David can't be in the lab much. but he has a love of research and is a good theoretician. I'm more the biologist." Bruns says. "We complement each other nicely."

Bruns is accustomed to sharing her work, explaining that most of her projects require teams of scientists to complete. "Nowadays it takes a large group to do something new," she says. "You can't do it by yourself in science anymore; you have to work with a fair number of people. But then there are more people to share in the excitement. too." Outside the lab, however, Bruns has to face competition from other scientists for grant money. Although the amount of dollars available for research is shrinking and Bruns spends a good amount of time on grant writing. she can be relatively sure that her research will continue to be funded. Her most recent grant ranked in the top 3 percent of applications to the National Institutes of Health. indicating that her peers are enthusiastic about the new directions she is taking and have a great deal of respect for her track record. Such respect was earned by Bruns almost from the beginning of her work. After receiving her doctorate in biochemistry from Saint Louis University. Bruns spent five years as a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University Medical School in St. Louis, Mo., and worked as an NIH trainee in endocrinology. During that time she developed her expertise in the field of calcium metabolism. which led to groundbreaking research in the understanding of how vitamin D works within the human body. "The research I'm doing now is a logical extension of my training in endocrinology," Bruns says. "I studied vitamin D-type hormones and have moved into exploring other new hormones." Not long after she moved to the University of Virginia Medical School in 1977. Bruns' knowledge about vitamin D and calcium binding proteins led to her election to the boards of two leading journals. Bone and Mineral and the journal of Bone and Mineral Research. She also received a Young Investigator Award from the American Society of Bone and Mineral Research. and has been a visiting professor at a number of other universities. The honors aren't reserved solely for Bruns, however. Over the years. her fellows and students have won a series of research awards. including one female fellow who repeated Bruns' performance in receiving a Young Investigator Award. Such milestones recall the encouragement that Bruns herself received as a woman entering what at the time was a male- dominated field. "Many of the scientists I look to up to are women; they always have such high standards," says Bruns. who now is a scientist that other women can see as a role model. "There still aren't a lot of women in the field but those who do go into it usually do very well." ~,,,

Researcn Scientist University of Yirginia ~eaical Scliool Charlottesville, Virginia

M. ELIZABETH HIRST BRUNS '66