'Legacy of Utah State Award' Recipient Raising Funds for Disabled Kids

You’ve got to be happy with who you are. Then, you can help others.

That’s the philosophy of Utah State University alum Bradley Hintze ’09. For the second consecutive year, the 29-year-old graduate student is embarking on a 100-mile bike ride to raise funds for people, like himself, with physical challenges. In 2011, Hintze raised $2,000 for United Cerebral Palsy’s “Ride Without Limits.” This year, he aims to raise $3,000 in the September 2012 event.

“I have a very visual disability,” says Hintze, recipient of the 2008 Legacy of Utah State Award. “You can see it. You can hear it (when I speak.) But look what I’m doing.”

What he’s doing is pursuing a doctoral degree in structural biology at North Carolina’s Duke University. The Sandy, Utah, native, who earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from USU, is a 2011 recipient of a competitive National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

At Duke, Hintze is building on research he started as an undergrad with USU faculty mentor Sean Johnson. Together, they used x-ray crystallography to study the intricacies of protein structure.

“I’m researching computational methods used to solve macromolecular models,” he says. “My work has implications for drug design, protein design and, generally, mechanistic understanding of biology at the atomic level.”

Hintze, who was born with cerebral palsy and is affected by neurological movement disorder known as dystonia, credits USU with changing the trajectory of his life.

“Ten years ago, I was working construction with my father with no real plans for the future,” he says. “With help from others, I was given the opportunity to take a sledge hammer to the perceptions that were entrenched in my mind. Given my life experiences, I have a deep passion to assist, in any way I can, to bring those same life-altering opportunities to people with disabilities.”

Participating in UCP’s charity ride, he says, is the perfect marriage between his two loves: cycling and helping others.

“Money raised through this event will help UCP provide opportunities to children and adults with disabilities,” says Hintze, who astonished many when he completed the 206-mile LOTOJA bike race in 2007, riding a tandem bike with USU mathematics lecturer Bryan Bornholdt. “Every individual UCP assists has a different set of challenges and the services provided can be life-altering for these very courageous people.”

For more information about Hintze’s participation in “Ride Without Limits,” visit his blog, “Bradley’s Pad."