Undergraduate students at ASU are conducting research with the potential to cure heart disease and some forms of cancer, thanks to a unique program within the School of Life Sciences.
These students are taking on projects usually reserved for graduate and doctoral students, and gaining national recognition for their findings.
Life science senior Julie Furmick, one of the student researchers, has received national recognition for her research to combat a type of lymphoma without the harsh side effects caused by current treatments.
Another student researcher, life science senior Zachary Hernandez, is exploring the link between Vitamin D and heart disease, a project he has been involved with since its beginning stages two years ago, when it was discovered that the human heart contains a vitamin D receptor.
Hernandez said the School of Life Sciences Undergraduate Research program has provided him with a rare opportunity to take charge of a research project as an undergraduate student.
“It’s completely independent, which is a lot of responsibility for the student, but I love that I’m not just doing what I’m told,” Hernandez said. “A lot of time you hear undergrads in the lab just wash dishes for graduate students and watch them do the research, so I feel really lucky to be in the situation that I am.”
Furmick said being a student researcher has taken her education out of the classroom and furthered it through hands-on experience.
“It’s helped tremendously by allowing me to see science firsthand,” she said. “I’m not sitting in a class listening to a professor lecture me, it’s like a virtual book. I get to do science with my own hands.”
Life sciences professor Ronald Rutowski, director of the research program, said students in the program develop both intellectual and lab skills that will benefit them in the future.
“These research projects are tremendously powerful educational experiences,”
Rutowski said. “[They] are an opportunity for students to become involved in the process of science and creating new knowledge.”
Hernandez said the program gave him valuable skills through analyzing different scenarios that arose in the lab.
“To be a really effective researcher, you have to be a detective almost — you have to see what went wrong, how it went wrong and why,” he said. “I see that as analogous to treating a patient. You have to figure out what went wrong, how it went wrong and how you can fix it.”
Hernandez added that the students are not the only ones who benefit from undergraduate research, as they bring youth and creativity into the lab.
“Creativity is a really important art of science, it helps you design new experiments and think about things in new ways,” he said. “The new blood of undergrads helps keep that creativity flowing.”
Furmick said the program has allowed her to be a part of ongoing research and co-author several grant proposals, something she said will work to her advantage when she is competing against other students for admission into medical school.
Both research fellows hope to continue on to medical school and become physicians, and Furmick said she hopes to further develop the research she started here at ASU.
Furmick hopes her research will develop a more effective cure for a type of lymphoma that would bind to receptors to kill cancerous cells without causing side effects like hypothyroidism and high cholesterol, which are often issues with current treatments.
The project is still in its beginning stages, but Furmick said she hopes it will be awarded grants to enable her to do further testing and eventually conduct human clinical trials.
“Right now this is all being done in a Petri dish, which is obviously a lot different than what’s going on in your body,” Furmick said.
Hernandez said he wants to be involved with research throughout his career, but he plans to pass his current research on to other researchers.
Hernandez said he hopes a researcher might be able to use his research in the future to treat patients with heart disease.
“What attracted me to science is how different people find different parts of the puzzle,” Hernandez said. “I might find a piece of this big grand scheme that may seem insignificant, but when you put all the pieces together, that’s when big breakthroughs happen.”
Reach the reporter at michelle.parks@asu.edu
