Discovering New Interests: BIMS Student Embraces Legen-dairy Research Opportunities

Story by Megan Bennett, VMBS Marketing & Communications

February 12, 2025

Thanks to opportunities through the BIMS program, undergraduates are being introduced to new career paths.

Benjamin Lamp, a senior biomedical sciences major at Texas A&M University, has discovered a new passion and career goal thanks to undergraduate research opportunities at the College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences (VMBS).

Lamp, a Plano native, was first exposed to research while working with Dr. Ivan Ivanov, a VMBS clinical professor, learning about the scientific field of bioinformatics, which uses computer technology to analyze complex biological data like DNA.

“That’s when I first was introduced to bioinformatics, and I really enjoyed it,” Lamp said. “One of the things that I think is cool about this work is that it’s interdisciplinary — it’s not just doing bench work; it’s also pulling in information from different fields and learning from different people.”

This new passion led Lamp to add a bioinformatics minor to his degree and continue searching for more research opportunities at Texas A&M.  

Diving Into Genomics

Lamp soon discovered the Biomedical Research Certificate (BRC), a program housed in the VMBS that helps students gain a broader understanding of research while performing publishable, original biomedical research within a research-intensive community.

He began a research project working in the lab of Dr. Monique Rijnkels, a VMBS research associate professor and associate head of the Department of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences.

Their project studied how cows’ mammary glands develop and change throughout the process of pregnancy and lactation by looking at changes at the genomic level. In addition to Rijnkels, other collaborators on the project included Ivanov and Natasha Bakhai, a recent biomedical sciences graduate.

“We had samples of mammary tissue from seven cows that were taken at different stages — virgin, mid-pregnancy, late-pregnancy, early lactation, and peak lactation,” Lamp said. “We were looking for patterns of gene expression over time within the data set.

“It’s really cool when we put it into our programs and looked at specific genes because we could see things like a ‘switch’ turning on between late pregnancy and early lactation that causes all these milk proteins to start increasing a lot,” he said. “You can see how the gland is working from the genomic standpoint.”

Presenting His Work

As he was wrapping up the BRC in fall 2024, Lamp learned about an opportunity through the International Milk Genomics Consortium (IMGC) to present his work to a large audience of fellow researchers.

He submitted an abstract and was awarded the IMGC 2024 Student Travel Award, which allowed him to attend the group’s annual international symposium at the University of California, Davis, last October.

The IMGC is a scientific society that advances the fields of milk research and lactation and identifies their impact on human health. The society’s annual symposium featured the latest cutting-edge scientific research and discoveries and included approximately 200 scientists from around the world.

At the conference, Lamp shared the research data his team collected over the course of a year, which can be applied to a wide variety of other projects, including studies on how to produce milk more efficiently and sustainably in dairy animals, how to help women who have problems lactating, and how to improve infant formula.

“When we presented it at the conference, people had different vested interests,” Lamp said. “My dream is that once this work is published, it will attract a lot of eyes and others can dive into the dataset and uncover stuff that we may have missed.”

Establishing A Career

After graduating with his bachelor’s degree in May, Lamp plans to pursue a Ph.D. program in bioinformatics, genomics, or computational biology. 

But wherever the future takes him, he hopes to keep research as the focus of his career.

“I’m hoping to keep doing what I’m doing now because I really enjoy it,” he said.

Attending the IMGC symposium only confirmed his desire to further dedicate himself to the world of research.

“Research can feel isolated sometimes, so getting to go to these conferences and interact with people who do it for a living is really cool,” he said. “I really enjoyed talking with people whose whole lives are dedicated to learning about milk and doing their research. Everybody has their own niche and getting to hear their specific stories and projects was really neat.”

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For more information about the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, please visit our website at vetmed.tamu.edu or join us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Contact Information: Jennifer Gauntt, Director of VMBS Communications, Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine & Biomedical Sciences, jgauntt@cvm.tamu.edu, 979-862-4216

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