: Describe why you are interested in undertaking a graduate program in biology or biomedical sciences. Also, discuss the types of questions you wish to pursue during graduate study and your ultimate academic and career objectives. Indicate any member(s) of the Washington University faculty with whom you might want to pursue a research topic.
I’m extremely fascinated about the process to delineate underlying connections in scientific research. Gregor J. Mendel’s cogent proof of connection between his hypothesized heredity units and the inherited traits is the paradigm of scientific beauty that drives me to studies of biology.
Immunology, a promising field where stunning stories of connections constantly spring up, is the subject that I want to delve deeper. It’s amazing to learn through literature that the interaction between mucosal immunity and microbiota actually takes a hand in mice’s susceptibility to diet-induced-obesity. It’s even more exciting to prove by logic-driven experiments that beyond conventionally accepted direct mechanisms such as inhibitory cytokines and cytolysis, regulatory T cells also suppress the activity of effector T cells by preventing their emigration from lymphoid organs (a project I participated in). Stories linking two points that were previously isolated or unveiling new relationship between two old acquaintances keep me hooked on immunological studies.
Later involvement in disease-oriented studies fueled my enthusiasm to apply my interest in discovering connections to medical applications. I remember clearly how thrilled the clinicians were at the indications of my cellular immunity biomarkers for clinical course of Type 1 Diabetes. If this relationship could be well established, they would be able to accordingly implement rationally targeted therapies, a breakthrough in a disease that currently has no cure. The direct relevance of my work to human condition constantly propelled me to persist and excel, and confirmed my desire to make a difference in immunological studies that can be translated.
I regard a keen insight in unknown connections as especially valuable for human studies. Current clinical trials have been confronted with considerable setbacks in treatment efficacy due to the complexity of diseases and high variance among population. It’s essential that we figure out the genetic or phenotypic pattern that influences the patients’ responses to treatments and subdivide the patient group.
With the eclectic interdisciplinary research interests of faculty in WUSTL, I believe the PhD program would provide me robust support to work at interface of different fields. Particularly, I would like to study the interaction between pathogen and host in Dr. Skip Virgin’s laboratory, especially how chronic or latent infections affect host response and ways to modify the interaction towards a direction that benefit the host. Also, I take great interest in Rodney Newberry’s work on isolated lymphoid follicles in the intestinal immune system and more specifically, the dietary impact on their development and functions in the process of infections and carcinogenesis.
