According to recent article published by U.S. News & World Report, less than 9 percent of prospective medical school students were admitted nationwide in 2011. Thankfully, SMU’s pre-med students are receiving a little help from their professors in the Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences through providing opportunities in on-campus laboratory research.
“Getting a research background teaches you to think critically and to think about things that are more on the discovery side of medicine,” Nick Burns, SMU senior who hopes to become an infectious and tropical disease specialist, said.
Burns is currently working with biology professor Dr. Larry Ruben in a research project regarding the Human African Trypanosomiasis, an infectious disease that endangers over 60 million people in 36 countries in the sub-Saharan desert of Africa. One aspect of the laboratory project involves testing new drugs on human cancer cells with hopes of finding a cure.
But finding a cure for deathly diseases is only one benefit of the science department’s laboratory research projects.
“On one hand you have the physician with a set of tools, but then on the other hand you have the researcher who is developing those tools, developing the physician’s handbag,” Burns explained. “Being on that side of research, having both types of backgrounds really puts you in a different arena than a lot of candidates for medical school.”
Students crammed into Dedman Life Sciences room 110, sitting on the stairs and on the floor in front of the projector to hear five professors present each of their current research projects that are open to undergraduate pre-medical and pre-health students.
Dr. Richard Jones presented his project on epigenetics, which for those that don’t speak the medical lingo, is one aspect of gene regulation. Although Jones showed passion and intelligence regarding the research of the Polycomb-group protein complex, he spoke about the importance of projects like his own for his audience of potential medical students.
“If you are among the few planning on going to grad school, or becoming authors of laboratory research findings, to get there you have to spend some time,” Jones said.
Later, Dr. Johannes Bauer explained his professional research that studies the molecular mechanisms of aging. Bauer had the rows of students laughing as he explained how he had planned on showing a video showing his subjects—two fruit flies—in a violent battle of one throwing the other down. Bauer’s project involves discovering how to extend a fly’s life span via genetic manipulation, nutrition and drug treatment—something researchers hope to someday apply to humans and their life span.
“It takes a lot of dedication,” Bauer said as he described the importance of devoting hours to science and the future of humanity.
