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| Professor Bruce Hammock takes aim at French exchange student-researcher Maud Bernay. |
DAVIS — It’s all about working hard, playing hard, opening borders and blending boundaries.
The eighth annual Bruce Hammock Lab Water Balloon Battle, aka Bruce’s Big Balloon Battle at Briggs, covered all that.
For 365 days a year, entomologist Bruce Hammock is a noted researcher, mentor and distinguished professor in the Department of Entomology at the University of California, Davis. But once a year, on a hot afternoon in July, he and some 50 scientists in his lab — postdoctorate fellows, graduates and undergraduates — break from their research and turn into water warriors.
They fill 2,200 water balloons and engage in a spirited water balloon battle on the Briggs Hall lawn. The afternoon of levity and camaraderie ends when they scoop up the balloon remnants and return to their labs to study such topics as cancer, diabetes, asthma, hypertension, inflammation, heart disease, autism and toxic substances.
It's a blast, water warriors agree.
"It took us two to three hours to fill the water balloons Friday but only 15 minutes to throw them,” said researcher and water balloon organizer Christophe Morisseau, a native of France.
This year’s “15 minutes of aim” involved scientists from 10 different countries, including Brazil, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Turkey and the United States. Faculty and staff in the Department of Entomology joined them on the watery battlefield, as did their families.
Hammock, a skilled water warrior, snagged water balloons in mid-air and tossed them back. However, chemical ecologist Walter Leal, professor of entomology, managed to drench him with a tray of water.
“I can’t beat Bruce Hammock with his number of publications, but I can with water balloons,” Leal quipped.
A member of the UC Davis Department of Entomology faculty since 1980 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1999, Hammock directs the UC Davis Superfund Research Program, which just received a $13.2 million, five-year competitive renewal grant from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS). The project, “Biomarkers of Exposure to Toxic Substances,” involves chromatographic, biosensor, and cell-based technologies to determine the fate and transport of hazardous materials in groundwater, surface water, and air as chemicals move from toxic waste sites.
The investigators also develop biomarkers of human and environmental exposure to these materials.
Hammock holds a joint appointment with the UC Davis Cancer Research Center. He also directs the National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program and the NIEHS Combined Analytical Laboratory.
Known for his outstanding teaching and mentoring, Hammock received the UC Davis Faculty Research Lecture Award in 2001 and the Distinguished Teaching Award for Graduate and Professional Teaching in 2008. His dedication to his students, his interdisciplinary thrust, and his scientific and professional career guidance are legendary, his colleagues and former students agree. His first-ever graduate student, Thomas Sparks, last year was named the 44th Scientist of the Year by the global research and development magazine, R&D.
Lately Hammock has been in the news for groundbreaking research that may one day help chronically ill patients. A new drug he and his lab developed to treat diabetes, hypertension and inflammatory has entered Phase II of human clinical trials to evaluate its efficacy.
The compound, a soluble epoxide hydrolase enzyme (s-EH) inhibitor, is “a first-in-class drug which may treat a suite of major cardiovascular and metabolic diseases,” said Hammock, who with UC Berkeley cell biologist Sarjeet Gill discovered the enzyme in 1969 while researching fundamental insect biology.
The Hammock lab is associated with several NIH training programs in toxicology, cardiology, oncology and vector biology.
Meanwhile, anyone who joins the Hammock lab (there are currently openings for three graduate positions: one in molecular biology, phage display and immunoassay; another in immunoassays and biosensors development; and the third in biochemistry and pharmacology of the soluble epoxide hydrolase) will also receive an invitation to join the Briggs Hall lawn party involving a chemical substance known as H20.
For more photos, see http://entomology.ucdavis.edu/news/waterballoonbattlephotos10.html.