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Phil Williams
Barely six years after earning her doctoral degree, Michelle Momany is watching a childhood dream come true. She came to science, she says, through television.
 “I was a hard-core Trekkie,” she says, laughing as she settles back in her office chair on a bright summer morning. “I wanted to be Spock or Kirk. And I wanted to boldly go where no man--make that person--had ever gone before. The whole idea of exploring fascinated me. When I was 12 and the others girls were going through their nurse phase, I wanted to be an astronaut.”
She never became an astronaut because of a Christmas gift she received when she was 12: a microscope. She was living in Florida at the time, on one of the many canals that creep across the landscape, and she immediately began examining everything from marsh grass to hair, fascinated by these unseen worlds.
She had another passion, however--?music. An ardent cellist, she began her post-secondary education as a music major at tiny Mobile College in Alabama and then transferred to Memphis State, where she met her husband-to-be, Cory, the son of a fellow music major.
He was finishing a degree at Rice University, and she joined him there after they were married--and at that point her interest in science overcame the cello. They both transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where she received bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in microbiology. Following post-doctoral fellowships at Purdue, they both came to the University of Georgia in 1996. Cory Momany has recently accepted a position in UGA’s College of Pharmacy.
Michelle Momany’s laboratory studies fungi, which come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, ranging from simple microscopic yeast to large mushrooms.
“Despite this huge range of shapes and sizes, all fungal shapes are determined by the same structure, the fungal cell wall,” says Momany. There are potential medical applications for a better understanding of that cell wall. Fungi in the human body, for instance, are usually kept in check by a healthy immune system, but for those with compromised immune systems fungi can cause serious illnesses. So the need for effective anti-fungal agents is increasing.
Momany’s research is directed at characterizing the components of the fungal cell wall. Members of her lab are working on the genetic system of a filamentous fungus called Aspergillus nidulans, as well as on the related human pathogen called Aspergillus fumigatus. As new cell wall genes are uncovered, her lab will extend its studies to include other medically important fungi.
Momany’s work has drawn considerable attention. In 1997, she was named one of two national winners of a $195,000 “new investigators” award in mycology from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, and she has also received a $231,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
“The main thrust of this research is to find new components in the fungal cell wall,” said Momany. “I am convinced there are many parts we don’t know anything about.”
Momany also maintains a full teaching schedule, and between instruction and research, she has a busy life indeed. She and Cory have recently bought a home here.
“My family moved around a lot when I was a kid, and so this is the first single-family house that we’ve owned,” she says. “I’m truly having a good time these days.”
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