Results

Publications of Meyerhoff Students

Given the program’s sustained success—almost 411 graduates since 1993, nearly all of whom are pursuing advanced degrees, and 220 more Meyerhoff Scholars currently at UMBC—it could begin to achieve critical mass in only a few short years.

Turning Undergraduates into Cutting-Edge Researchers
On many campuses, undergraduates rarely have access to substantive research experiences—much less to the labs of eminent faculty, federal agencies or major corporations. For Meyerhoff Scholars, these experiences are an integral part of the program.

Undergraduate research is widespread at UMBC because highly productive research faculty are aggressively connecting with undergraduates—a claim that many college and universities make but few actually accomplish. Most institutions choose to focus on either research and graduate study or teaching and undergraduate education. But at UMBC, notes Dr. Michael Summers, a UMBC biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator, “we believe that the undergraduate experience and a commitment to research go hand-in-hand. Increasingly, cutting-edge biomedical research is not being done by old men in white coats in green government buildings. It’s being done by young people—in particular, Meyerhoff students.”

This scholarship is not just cutting-edge, it is truly discipline-shaping. Meyerhoff Scholars helped to solve all three of the AIDS virus’s structural proteins identified in the HHMI lab. Chianna Paschall, M4, Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania and the first Meyerhoff to work with Summers, modeled the first key component of the protein, and her work was featured in a cover story for the Journal of Molecular Biology. Chelsea Stalling, M.D./Ph.D. at University of Pennsylvania, who solved the third and final structure of a key HIV protein, co-authored a paper published in Science.