Why is he so invested? Because his fight with ALS is personal. He was diagnosed with the disease two years ago.

What is he searching for? New information about amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a deadly condition that affects approximately 30,000 people in the United States today.

He has little use of his left hand, so he uses his right hand to alternate between the keyboard and the mouse. He reads a lot — looking for causes, clues, shreds of evidence that might yield truths about a devastating disease. Then he goes next door to his lab, where his students and postdocs are gleaning new knowledge from the chemical composition of frozen fish.

It’s a Tuesday morning, and Michael Bereman is in his office on Centennial Campus, poring over data on a deadly toxin found in ponds and lakes that many of us pass by every day.

A Dream Transformed

Michael Bereman’s Wolfpack roots run deep. He grew up in Apex, the son of an NC State professor. He completed his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees in chemistry here.

Bereman distinguished himself as a student, according to his mentor, David Muddiman, Jacob and Betty Belin Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemistry. “Michael immediately struck me as someone who really thought deeply about science and really wanted to make a difference,” Muddiman said. “But more than that he was extraordinarily curious.”

After graduate school, Bereman moved to Seattle to do postdoctoral work at the University of Washington. But he kept one eye on Raleigh. When he interviewed at NC State for an opening for an assistant professor on the biological sciences faculty and in the Environmental Health Science faculty cluster, “Everyone said that he was by far the best candidate that they had ever imagined applying for this position,” Muddiman said. “Being hired back into the institution into a completely different department with a very different background is a really testament to how much he grew as a scientist.”

Michael immediately struck me as someone who thought deeply about science and really wanted to make a difference.

So Bereman and his wife and dog packed up and moved back east in 2013. “It was a dream come true,” Bereman said. “I couldn’t have imagined it better.”

Then everything changed. Bereman was watching TV one night in January 2015 when he felt a twitch in his left bicep. “I didn’t really think too much of it,” he said. “It was just strange.”

Around the same time, he tried to do some pushups, and his left shoulder gave out. There was pain. Something was wrong.

Six months later — three days before his 34th birthday — he found himself sitting in a doctor’s office with his young son, receiving a diagnosis that would change his life: ALS.

Often called Lou Gehrig’s disease after the New York Yankees great who suffered from it, ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects the brain and spinal cord. As neurons throughout the body degenerate, muscles gradually waste away.

There is no cure. The average survival time after onset of symptoms is three to five years. Only two years after returning home to NC State, Bereman found himself contemplating the end of his dream.

His doctor told him that many of his patients retire after receiving their diagnosis. “That was the last thing I was going to do,” Bereman said. “I had just really started my life.”