WALLA WALLA, Wash. – By the time he tosses his racket aside for the last time, Whitman College tennis player Robbie Munday will have enjoyed a great deal of success as a collegiate athlete. He will finish his career in the second or third spot on Whitman’s all-time list of career tennis victories, and he will have shared in one and possibly two Northwest Conference championships.
But when Munday joins his Missionary teammates this weekend in pursuit of that second NWC title, make note that his prowess in the classroom and laboratory far overshadows his on-the-court accomplishments.
Munday, who is majoring in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology, missed his team’s final regular season matches last week because he was one of three students representing Whitman at the 21st Annual National Conference on Undergraduate Research in San Rafael, Calif. Munday’s presentation focused on research he did last summer at the Salk Institute of Biological Studies (San Diego, Calif.), where he interned with Dr. Stephane Genoud, a post-doctoral fellow from Switzerland.
"We discovered a gene that we think signals the process of myelination in the central nervous system," Munday says. "Myelin is basically the insulation that wraps around neuronal axons, which allows electrical currents to be transmitted very quickly between neurons. For example, it allows you to move your hand quickly enough to catch a baseball when it’s thrown at you. If we are right, and we think we are, and the gene does signal this process, it would be a huge discovery."
Major discoveries are nothing new for the Salk Institute. In collaborating with Dr. Genoud, Munday was working in the institute’s Laboratory of Genetics, which is headed by world-renown professor Fred H. Gage. In 1998, Dr. Gage’s lab showed that, contrary to previously accepted dogma, human beings are capable of growing new nerve cells throughout life. His work may lead to methods of replacing or enhancing brain and spinal cord tissues lost or damaged due to neurodegenerative disease or trauma.
Munday, who is basing his senior honors thesis on his role in last summer’s research, also gave presentations last October at a regional undergraduate research conference in Portland, Ore., and in early April at Whitman’s annual Undergraduate Conference.
While saying he has "thoroughly enjoyed" his four years with the Missionary tennis team and coach Jeff Northam, Munday is just as complimentary about the academic support and guidance he has received from the college and its faculty. He credits Leena Knight and Tom Knight, two members of the Whitman biology faculty, for playing major roles in making arrangements for the National Undergraduate Conference, and it was one of Whitman’s Louis B. Perry summer research scholarships that financed his work last summer at the Salk Institute.
As he wraps up his senior year, Munday has been exploring a research interest in obestatin, a neurohormone produced by cells that line stomach. "This hormone travels through the bloodstream to the brain, where it tells the brain you are full and should stop eating," Munday says. Obestatin has a 'sister' hormone, ghrelin, that tells the brain when a person is hungry and needs to eat. Ghrelin may also play a positive role in the process of learning and memory formation.
Drug companies have shown interest in the idea of injecting obese people with obestatin as a way to discourage overeating and weight gain, Munday notes. But if obestatin, as a balancing agent to ghrelin, has any potential to disrupt learning and memory formation, its use for weight-management purposes might come with a significant side effect, Munday says. "It is this potential side effect of obestatin that I am interested in."
Munday, who was elected to ESPN The Magazine’s Academic All-District Team, is volunteering this academic year in the Cancer Center at Walla Walla’s St. Mary Medical Center. "I make sure the chemotherapy patients and their families are comfortable, and I also shadow a medical physicist who helps educate me on the latest therapeutic strategies to treat cancer patients."
As a sophomore at Whitman, Munday volunteered in St. Mary’s Emergency Room. Also as a sophomore, he was Whitman’s top organic chemistry student and received the American Chemical Society’s PolyEd Award for Achievement in Organic Chemistry.
Associate professor of mathematics Laura Schueller, the faculty athletics representative at Whitman, has nominated Munday for the NCAA’s Walter Byers Postgraduate Scholarship, and he was recently elected to Phi Beta Kappa, the national academic honorary society. After graduating from Whitman in May, he will start applying to various medical schools. He hopes to work in a laboratory research setting in Washington, D.C, next year and then start his medical studies in the fall of 2008.
A resident of Okanogan Falls, British Columbia, Munday is a graduate of Penticton Secondary. He is the son of Bonnie and Robert Munday of Okanogan Falls.
Dave Holden, Whitman Sports Information
(509) 527-5902; holden@whitman.edu