The associated professions are many, from biotechnologists working to develop biopharmaceutical drugs, to microbiologists and epidemiologists, data scientists, laboratory managers and makers of artificial limbs and organs, to mention only a few. 

Delaware is just the place for establishing such a career, according to Life Sciences in Delaware, a 2021 report issued by the Delaware Prosperity Partnership and the Delaware Bioscience Association. Bioscience is a key economic driver in Delaware—generating $2 billion in gross domestic product (GDP) annually, with 11,000 people employed across various sectors, from medical R&D to agricultural and industrial biosciences — and the state is poised for much more growth, the report said. 

Delaware INBRE, an initiative funded by the NIH via its Institutional Development Award (IDeA) program and the state of Delaware, has an important role in maintaining that momentum, according to Duncan. The network collaborates to fund shared research facilities, to seed promising ideas proposed by early career researchers, and to provide undergraduate students with internships and other opportunities to do hands-on research.

Since Delaware INBRE launched in 2001, the program has provided research experiences for 869 undergraduate students, with more than a third of those students continuing on to pursue graduate degrees. Close to a third of the scholars are now employed in science or health-related fields in Delaware. 

The network’s impact on early career researchers also has been considerable, leading to dozens of proposals submitted to funding competitions at the National Institutes of Health and other federal agencies over the years, resulting in 393 research grants awarded, through 2021.

Duncan’s own research focuses on the eye, specifically how the ocular lens responds to injury, and how this can limit the outcomes of cataract surgery. Her work has continuously been funded by NIH since 1998, and she credits her successful start to the seed funding she received via the very first NIH IDeA grant ever made to a Delaware institution (Professor Daniel Simmons of the Department of Biological Sciences, now retired, as principal investigator) which funded the facilities, equipment and people needed to expand UD’s research in molecular and structural biology in the late 1990s. 

This award, which also made initial investments in infrastructure, such as high-end microscopes and the experts needed to run them, have led to today’s world-class Bio-Imaging Center, a core research facility at UD that assists bioscience researchers in Delaware and far beyond with their studies. And that’s just one example at UD alone.

“We couldn’t have gotten where we are today without that initial support from the NIH,” Duncan said. 

Duncan sees INBRE as a statewide force for getting all the research and education units talking together to help build a science ecosystem that is poised to solve today’s most vexing problems, while simultaneously expanding opportunity for all. 

“The thing I have always enjoyed the most is helping other people be successful,” said Duncan, who directed the graduate program in the Department of Biological Sciences for 11 years. “And that’s really what Delaware INBRE is — seeing if you can fix barriers to success, especially for people who are the first generation in their family to go to college, who are from an underrepresented group or under serious financial constraints. It’s a really great job to be able to remove barriers for people with great ideas.”