Earlier this week, the University announced two recipients of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation Scholarship.
The Beckman Scholars grant is a national program that selects 10 universities to receive $156,000 each for undergraduate students who do research in chemistry, biology, biochemistry and medical sciences.
This year, second-year Engineering student Ana Untaroiu and second-year College student Lucy Jin won the awards and will receive $21,000 in stipend and travel for two summers and one academic year. Their faculty mentors will also receive $5,000.
Jin said the grant will not only allow her to explore more areas of research but also help her to find ways to improve her methods of research and presentation.
“I study the role of destructive signaling in the formation of the proprioceptive circuit, a sensory system required for knowing the relative position of your body parts in space,” Jin said in an email statement. “More specifically, I look at certain members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor super family, which have previously been shown to have destructive roles in the development of other nervous systems.”
Untaroiu said she is in the early stages of his project researching drug resistance through RNA sequencing.
“In this project I plan on using RNA sequencing for transcriptional characterization of drug-resistant and susceptible malaria parasites in hopes of better understanding how these parasites are able to develop antimalarial drug resistance,” Untaroui said in an email statement. “I have spent a significant amount of time learning about lab techniques and background on my proposed project from reading literature.”
Both Jin and Untaroiu expressed how much the scholarship means to them and how it will guide their research in the future — especially with regard to networking opportunities within their respective fields.
“The grant, to me, is an opportunity to explore more areas of research as it allows me to travel to scientific conferences where I can learn about the research of individuals from all over the nation or maybe even outside of the nation,” Jin said.
In order to apply for the scholarship, both recipients submitted a research proposal, personal essay, transcript and recommendations. They were then interviewed by the Beckman Scholarship committee.
Untaroiu said she enjoys research and looks forward to continuing it with the help of the money from the Beckman Foundation.
“I’m interested in research because I like to learn new things,” Untaroiu said. “I think research is different from other fields in that through research you get to discover and learn new things and build off of these new discoveries, not just apply what is already known.”
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