Thirty-eight undergraduate students were granted Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards to support their ground-breaking summer research in a diverse range of fields.
The Harrison Undergraduate Research Award is given to students researching in fields such as theology, medicine and global sustainability. Students receiving the Harrison grant are guided by University faculty and mentored in their fields of interest. Recipients are awarded up to $3,000, while faculty mentors who supervise student projects are awarded $1,000.
Bansi Patel, a third-year biology and global public health double major, received the Harrison Grant to support her work in researching dendritic and T-cells. Both dendritic and T-cells are different types of white blood cells that work in tandem as part of the immune system that responds to potentially harmful antigens.
The Harrison Grant will support Patel’s research into the efficacy of two specific types of dendritic cells — wild type and knockout. The two kinds of dendritic cells work differently in the immune system to affect T-cells’ response to different antigens.
“My research project in particular is going to evaluate the differences between the wild type and knockout dendritic cells and determine whether one or the other can cause a difference in the T-cell response in vitro assay,” Patel said. “We will also characterize the difference in T-helper cells. Currently, we are hypothesizing that the knockout dendritic cells are not as efficient as the wild type cells in inducing a T- cell proliferative response.”
Because of financial support provided by the Harrison grant, Patel is able to complete her work alongside her faculty mentor during the summer.
“[The Harrison Grant] definitely allows me to be a little bit more flexible,” Patel said. “I’m staying in Charlottesville over the summer, and it helps to buy materials, because everything is so expensive. It definitely helps financially, but I think it also provides a sort of motivating factor because it’s extremely rewarding to receive a grant for your work.”
Undergraduate student Usnish Majumdar also received the Harrison Undergraduate
Research Award for his work. A third-year neuroscience major, Majumdar is researching the relationship between the brain and genetics. Depending on a person’s genome, the unique set of DNA each person possesses, the brain grows and develops a certain way. However, it is fairly unknown how human genomes exactly determine brain development. With the support of the Harrison grant, Majumdar will be able to study this relationship.
“In general, [our research] is contributing to a better understanding of how the brain can produce such a huge range of cell types and change over time,” Majumdar said. “It’s this huge range [of cells] that allows us to change, learn and adapt.”
Similar to Patel, Majumdar emphasizes that the Harrison Undergraduate Research Awards are extremely beneficial in supporting his work in neuroscience and genetics.
“I’ve been very privileged to have the chance to study this,” Majumdar said. “The Harrison Grant has given me pretty important financial support to stay in Charlottesville over the summer, which I wouldn’t have had otherwise. There’s this kind of support that [the Harrison Grant] gives you. It gives you the idea that there is a community out there to help you.”
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