Major: Biology Research Department: Immunology Graduation Date: May 2021
Abstract: Tuberculosis (TB) is one of the most common infectious causes of death for humans today2. TB infection can come in a latent and symptomatic active form. Type II Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM) is a risk factor for TB infection. Both TB and T2DM have been found to cause distinct changes in glycosylation patterns of IgG2. IgG is important part of secondary immune function and its function can change due to glycosylation. We hypothesized that changes in the pattern of glycosylation on IgG seen when comparing Active TB and Latent TB nondiabetic patients change when comparing Active TB and Latent TB diabetic patients. Email:[email protected]
What does research mean to you? Research is a chance for you to take a deep dive into a particular subject area that interests you. By doing research, you will eventually become the expert in the room of whatever topic you’ve been putting time in and will contribute to meaningful conversations relating to furthering your topic. Doing research you’re basically going to become a nerd/geek in one specific area, think of it like those people that know every lyric and everything about a particular music artist, but for science.
Tell us about your journey. As a kid, I was always told by my teachers that I was gifted in the sciences, but never really told how to actually go about making that into a career. While the obvious answer at first was to just try to go to medical school, after coming to UTD I learned more about what a PhD and MD/PhD was and decided to look into that. The Green Fellowship was an opportunity that allowed me to further explore those areas and what my career might look like if I went down that road. Overall, the Green Fellowship was an excellent experience because it allowed me to become more informed about what I wanted to do and make my goals after finishing my undergrad degree at UTD.
How did the pandemic affect me? When COVID started to hit the United States hard my lab shut down operations for while out of safety precautions. While my lab tried to do what we could from home, the nature of our experiments required them to be done in the lab in person so I ended up having a lot of unexpected free time. My lab decided to use this time to have everyone take courses in Statistics and get trained in using a couple of new statistics programs, but I also personally used the time as a period to self reflect about my own goals and desires.
Where am I now? Offered an acceptance at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. While there, I hope to try to do some research in virology as well as clinical research focused on disparities in healthcare.
Advice for Future Green Fellows
One of the greatest advantages of the fellowship is the ability for exploration it provides. Several green fellows that had prior research experience, myself included, used the Green Fellowship to explore different types of labs or different fields of interest than what we already had experience in. It can be very difficult to have very meaningful experience if you’re constantly switching to a new lab at UTD, but due to the intensity and length of the Green Fellowship, you’re guaranteed meaningful experience in whatever field that your lab is studying. Especially for those seeking a PhD, having a better idea of what field you actually want to do research in is great boon to have before you commit yourself to a lab for your degree, and the Green Fellowship is a great time to be doing that exploration.