Two BC Pre-Med Students Are Salk Scholars
6/16/2008
Ghulam Dastgir and Alex Pyranneau, both pre-med students, recently won the 2008 Salk Scholarships, which are awarded to eight students throughout CUNY annually. Salk Scholarships are a tribute to Dr. Jonas E. Salk, the 1934 City College alum who developed the Polio vaccine in 1955. To qualify, candidates must be nominated by their pre-med advisors, carry out research work, and be accepted by a medical school.
"Practice Makes Perfect."
Ghulam Dastgir
After four years as a pre-med student at BC, Ghulam Dastgir is eager to start attending medical school this fall.
"Since I can remember, I was drawn to the social aspect of medicine, and interacting with patients on a one-to-one basis," he says.
Ghulam and his family moved to New York from Pakistan when he was seven years old. While attending Midwood High School he was able to do research on pancreatic cancer at SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He quickly developed a love for research. "It's the cornerstone of medical breakthroughs and discoveries," says the new Salk Scholar.
At BC, he has done research work under the guidance of chemistry Professor Richard Magliozzo that involves studying the molecular mechanisms of infectious diseases that afflict large segments of the poor in other parts of the world, killing millions of people each year. "I started working on this in February 2007 and I obtained relevant data that differed from published reports," Ghulam says. "I want to find out more about this mechanism so I still have work to do."
Because the College's BA-MD program encourages students to become involved in the community, Ghulam has volunteered at the Midwood High School Biology department, working one semester with lab students to help them develop their projects. In addition, he has volunteered at Edward R. Murrow High School, tutoring students in the sciences. Over the past two semesters, he has been working with the Inclusion Program at Murrow, assisting students who have developmental deficiencies in reading, and math. "I'm always amazed that changes in the smallest of things can have the greatest of impacts," he says, referring to both his volunteer and research works. "And that changes at the molecular level can impact the health and lives of millions of people."
In September he is finally bound for Medical School at SUNY Downstate Medical Center College of Medicine in East Flatbush.
"It's all part of the learning process."
Alex Pyronneau
For somebody whose first love was Music with a capital M, pre-med student Alex Pyronneau has shown great devotion to the sciences since his days at Moore High School, where he played the piano to connect with his classmates and give them a respite from the daily grind. The tunes were healing, no doubt.
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Staten Island, Alex said he has followed the example set by both his parents who, after fleeing their native Haiti, reinvented themselves to support their kids. "My mom is a registered nurse and my dad, who was a musician for a famous Haitian band, is now a teacher," Alex says. "They had to go back to school to retrain and get a job."
Today, Alex is a Salk Scholar en route to Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, one of four medical schools that accepted him.
"It's a better fit for what I'm looking for," he says. "I'm interested in getting a PhD in neuroscience after my MD degree and perhaps do neurosurgery and neurology." Recently, he was offered membership in the undergraduate honors organization Phi Beta Kappa.
Mentored by Biology Department Chair Peter Lipke, Alex investigated "cell wall protein biogenesis" as part of the research lab work required to apply for a Salk Scholarship. "We need to have a better understanding of how proteins work," he says.
He was doing bio research before that, however. In 2006, he was involved in neurons research at the biology lab of Columbia University. "We investigated intercellular communications between the different types of neurons found on the fruit fly," Alex explained. Last summer he had a chance to go to the Johns Hopkins’s bio lab to study the behavior of mice whose genetic structure had been manipulated to resemble the characteristics of patients with Alzheimer’s disease. In every case, the results were mixed.
"But they are good learning experiences," says Alex, who joined the Minority Access to Research Careers (MARC) at BC, an organization funded by the National Institutes of Health to assist undergrads from minority backgrounds who want to continue doing research.
The way Alex sees it, all research in the end becomes accumulated data that is used by others to raise questions not yet answered. "Eventually, you modify a few elements and try it again. It’s the way science works."
And he still finds time to play his favorite pieces by Beethoven and Thelonious Monk.
