Meet the Scholars from 2010

Manjot Bagri
Manjot Bagri graduated in May 2010 from Tracy Joint Union High School in the city of Tracy, California. She has been involved in the Regional Occupation Program in Biotechnology for three years at her high school, and has completed her International Baccalaureate Diploma with her extended research essay being on the subject of Agrobacterium tumefaciens and its role in tumor formations in numerous plant species. She has been accepted into UCLA's Honors Program, and plans on double-majoring in Biochemistry and Spanish. As of now, she is entering college at sophomore standing with the credits obtained from the AP and IB Program. She plans to have an enriching time at UCLA interacting with professors and acquiring valuable undergraduate research experience while on campus, and using those skills in combination with the NIH research experience to become a true UGSP Scholar.

Matt Blackburn
Matt Blackburn is from West Chester, PA. He attended Bishop Shanahan high school and graduated in 2007. He is now a senior at Loyola University Maryland and is double-majoring in Biology and Chemistry with a minor in Spanish. A member of the university's Honors Program, he presented on Loyola's devotion to the Ratio Studiorum in its honors curriculum at the 2008 National Collegiate Honors Council Convention in Austin, TX. He has been a long-time music aficionado and was an active member in his high school's jazz and concert ensembles, and continues to be involved through Loyola's jazz ensemble when those meddlesome labs don't interfere. He enjoyed his first encounter with the joys of research last summer at University of Maryland's Greenebaum Cancer Center, where he focused on determining the impact of the isoforms of the protein EBP1 on the expression of the receptor tyrosine kinase HER2 in the breast cancer cell line AU565. This fall he is working on another research project, which seeks to determine the impact that high transposon load in a genome has on the overall transcriptome, using the yeast S. cerevisiae as a model for how transposons impact expression in the human genome. Although he has no particular research interests yet, he is leaning towards virology and epidemiology and is elated to have the chance to explore these interests through the UGSP at the NIH.

Katherine Gumps
Is currently a rising junior at the College of Charleston, majoring in Molecular Biology and Discovery Informatics. While at the college, Katherine has conducted undergraduate research in two separate labs within the Biology Department. In May 2010, she began research with Dr. Christopher Korey to study the role of palmitoylation in synaptic vesicle cycling using D. melanogaster as a model for infantile onset Batten's Disease. She is also very devoted to increasing scientific awareness and understanding in the general population and is currently developing a series of booklets on various scientific topics set in an artistic and user-interactive format. In the future, Katherine will be pursuing a PhD in the neurosciences. She is particularly interested in understanding how neurons are affected by ‘stress factors' introduced by the environment and hopes her research can be put towards deciphering the mechanisms leading to the development of psychological disorders.

Daniel Montville
Daniel Montville is a senior at the University of Wisconsin - Madison majoring in Medical Microbiology & Immunology. He has a deep interest for studying the molecular biology, pathogenesis and epidemiology of human disease. Daniel serves as an undergraduate research assistant in the pediatric department of the University of Wisconsin Hospital & Clinics performing Allergy, Asthma and Immunology Research. For the past two years, Daniel has conducted research under the direction of Robert F. Lemanske, M.D. and Daniel Jackson M.D. in the Childhood Origins of Asthma (COAST) laboratory. COAST is a prospective birth cohort study designed to examine the interactions among age and immune system development with respect to the subsequent development of asthma and allergic diseases. Daniel is particularly interested in examining the interaction between virus and allergen in children. He is currently examining the relationships between total IgE and peripheral blood mononuclear cell rhinovirus-induced cytokines. Daniel's ultimate goal is to obtain his M.D. or M.D./Ph.D. and become a professor of medicine.

Namratha Sastry
Namratha Sastry is a junior from Powell, Ohio. She is majoring in biology and psychology at West Virginia University, and is a member of the WVU McNair Scholars Program, the Honors College, and the Psychology Club. Her future goal is to pursue a graduate degree and eventually earn a Ph.D. in neurobiology, allowing her to continue researching in the neurosciences. She hopes to conduct basic research to study how the fundamentals of neuroscience can affect the behavior of an organism. Her current research deals with the neuromuscular activity in decapod crustaceans. In her spare time, she enjoys reading novels, gardening, and spending time with her friends.