Courtesy of Lewis & Clark
A Lewis & Clark chemistry professor has received a nearly $250,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study the bladder microbiome and expand paid undergraduate research opportunities.
Jean-Philippe Gourdine, an assistant professor of chemistry, was awarded the Launching Early-Career Academic Pathways in Mathematical and Physical Sciences grant. His research focuses on the urobiome — the community of bacteria in the urinary tract — and its implications for urinary health, including conditions like urinary tract infections and overactive bladder syndrome. He is especially interested in women’s health, considering they are more likely to be impacted by these issues.
One of the main purposes of the grant is to pay student workers in Gourdine’s lab. Four students worked for him this year, and this summer, he has two positions available through the John S. Rogers Science Program, which allows students to collaborate with faculty and gain lab experience. Compensation is an important factor for Gourdine.
“We are able to get some students paid because it’s important to have students have lab experience. But I’m cognizant, and I put that also on the grant, that some students, they have many jobs, and they cannot be dedicated fully to science,” Gourdine said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
Elie Al Khoury ’26 is one student who has benefited from the grant and his experience working in Gourdine’s lab. He began working there as part of the Rogers program in the summer of 2024, then continued in Fall 2025 and did another summer with the Rogers program. This academic year, he has been working in the lab and writing his thesis. The NSF grant means he will earn academic credit along with compensation.
“I’m very lucky because not a lot of people get paid to work in the lab adjacent to their studies, but I am getting paid to do some of the work, and then some of the work is my hard effort,” Al Khoury said in an interview with The Mossy Log.
The grant also helped the chemistry and biology departments buy new equipment. As for professional opportunities, the funds enabled Gourdine to take students with him to international biology conferences around the country to present their work and connect with scientists in the field. Last November, Al Khoury was the only undergraduate student at the annual meeting of the Society for Glycobiology he attended with Gourdine in San Diego.
Al Khoury spoke to the benefits of having new lab equipment. He explained that much of the equipment costs thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, so the funding was able to bring expensive instruments to the Olin Center for Physics and Chemistry, where Gourdine’s lab is located, sparing trips to Bodine. He said that some of the new machines greatly reduce the time needed to isolate the protein they study.
Gourdine said his work challenges how scientists think about bacteria in the body, considering the relatively recent discovery of the urobiome in 2014.
“The paradigm is shifting. We are thinking you have the good and the bad bacteria. But what we see it’s all about the proportion of how many of those that are associated with diseases that are there, versus those that are associated with health,” Gourdine said.
Gourdine’s work examines how bacteria survive in the bladder — an environment with limited nutrients — and how they metabolize sugar. He is interested in understanding how uromodulin, an abundant protein in urine, helps feed bacteria in the bladder. In analyzing bacterial genes, he aims to discern how different microbial compositions affect health and disease. Overall, Gourdine hopes that his work will lead to more effective medical treatment of bladder issues that focuses on the bacteria present.
Al Khoury stressed that the work is still in its beginning stages due to the novelty of the field of urobiology, but the work Gourdine does is unique.
“It’s basically very, very preliminary work. There are bigger labs that are doing higher impact studies, but no one’s centered around that aspect of the protein,” Al Khoury explained.“No one’s really looking at the survival of the bacteria, and so that’s what we’re doing — or we’re trying.”
Gourdine, whose background is in glycobiology — the study of sugars and their interactions with biological systems — began exploring the urobiome after research challenged the long-standing belief that urine was sterile. The presence of a urinary tract microbiome led Gourdine to wonder what these bacteria eat, a question that connected from his work in glycobiology and use of bioinformatics. Coming from this perspective, he began investigating how bacteria in the bladder metabolize sugars and survive in a relatively nutrient-limited environment. He started working at LC in 2021 after beginning his work on the urobiome and bioinformatics at Oregon Health & Science University.
Not only is continuing his research on the urobiome a goal for Gourdine, he also wants to create more research opportunities for students, including some that take place abroad. Next academic year, Gourdine will be on sabbatical in Grenoble, France to conduct more in-depth work at a large research institution. Al Khoury will work in the lab again this summer and help prepare it so “the next generation” of students can be ready to do research when Gourdine is abroad. Gourdine will still keep in touch with LC students helping with his research, and both he and Al Khoury hope to be able to publish work about their findings.
Gourdine wants to use his connections with other labs to write grants so that students are able to gain experience in international labs. While there is not currently a study abroad program entirely dedicated to chemistry, he hopes that in the future, students studying abroad through LC could secure work in a lab to gain experience. This grant not only provided Gourdine with funds to pay students and buy equipment, he also sees it as a “stepping stone” to write larger grants.
For Gourdine, the NSF grant both funds his research on the urobiome, and allows him to provide students with hands-on experience in scientific research and opens up doors to future grants.
“In the biochemistry lab, teaching lab, my students are able to work with me and to see exactly the joy — and pain, sometimes — of research. They’re able to test some of my hypotheses there. So I’m advancing my knowledge to that extent,” Gourdine said.
Al Khoury said that he has felt the impact of the experience of working with Gourdine. He hopes to continue medical research after graduation and is thankful for the opportunities he provided him.
“I wouldn’t have done any of this without him. He’s such a great mentor and such a go-getter,” Al Khoury said.
To learn more about Gourdine’s work, visit the 2026 project descriptions page for the Rogers Program.
About the Author
