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BIOPHYSICAL SOCIETY NEWSLETTER
3
SEPTEMBER
2017
Biophysicist in Profile
OTONYE BRAIDE-MONCOEUR
Otonye Braide-Moncoeur
Otonye Braide-Moncoeur
, assistant professor of
chemistry at Gordon College in Massachusetts,
had a truly international upbringing due to her
father’s career as a diplomat. “I’m considered a
third culture kid,” she shares. “I grew up in several
countries: Gabon, Nigeria, United States, Philip-
pines, Austria; I moved a lot. Within the United
States alone I have lived in Texas, New York,
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Georgia, Florida, and
now Massachusetts.”
As a child, Braide-Moncoeur told her parents that
she wanted to do work that would help people.
“My mom planted the seed a typical Nigerian
parent would,” she says. “At least back then, the
approved career paths were lawyers, doctors,
engineers, pharmacists. So it was only fitting that
I become a medical doctor and since I felt I liked
kids, pediatrician was it. But I also thoroughly
enjoyed the arts and have always participated in
it.” She combined the two into a big dream of
becoming a pediatrician by day and a Broadway
actress by night.
By the time she was in high school, Braide-
Moncoeur was still planning to become a medi-
cal doctor, but found herself drawn to biology
and afraid of the chemistry and physics classes.
“This fear carried on into college even though I
was determined to be a pre-med major,” she says.
“Freshman year I took my general biology prereq-
uisites but completely avoided general chemistry;
I was also happy calculus-based physics was not
in my future.” Toward the end of her freshman
year, a friend encouraged her to get on track with
her pre-med requirements. She enrolled in general
chemistry the next semester and it suddenly
clicked. “From that point on, science became this
big puzzle that required solving and I was stimu-
lated in so many new ways. I eventually switched
to be a chem major, which meant doing calculus-
based physics and more math, but I found myself
enjoying them,” she shares.
As an undergraduate, Braide-Moncoeur par-
ticipated in a number of Research Experiences
for Undergraduates (REUs), which sparked her
interest in a research career rather than one as a
medical doctor. It was during a Multidisciplinary
International Research Training (MIRT) REU
program facilitated through Winston-Salem
State University that she first became interested
in biophysical topics. “Through this program,
they placed me in a proteomics research group in
Biomedicum Helsinki based on my interests. Dr.
Marc H. Baumann
assigned me to a project where
we purified and characterized the recombinantly
produced Tyrosine-kinase Hck SH3,” she ex-
plains. “Our overall goal was to determine which
segments triggered aggregation and formation of
amyloid fibrils, which was of particular interest for
understanding various neurodegenerative diseases.
This opportunity really impacted my desire to
pursue work that would allow me to study pro-
teins especially in relation to diseases.”
A few years later, during her PhD studies at the
University of Florida, she was officially introduced
to biophysics in the lab of
Gail E. Fanucci
. “As
a physical chemist, her group used various tech-
niques — EPR, NMR, etc. — to tackle biological
questions, and it was through her accepting me
into her research group that I learned what bio-
physics entailed,” she says. “She also encouraged
me to apply for the Minority Affairs Committee
[now the Committee for Inclusion and Diversity]
travel award to attend the Biophysical Society An-
nual Meeting; BPS made a remarkable impression
on me.”
During her graduate studies, Braide-Moncoeur
had a long journey to finding a lab that was the
right fit for her, in terms of research interests and
mentorship. “The desire for this combo, though it
seems reasonable, became the biggest obstacle for
me during my graduate school career. In one case,
the advisor I had was cornering me into computa-
tional work, which focused on cyclic square wave
voltammetry. In another case, the initially agreed-
upon project was no longer of interest to the
(Continued on next page)
Profilee-at-a-Glance
Institution
Gordon College
Area of Research
Mechanistic
understanding
of pulmonary surfactant
at the membrane-fluid
interface