Tulsi Patel, an Honors student from Acworth who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in genetics, has received a 2009 American Dream Fellowship from the Merage Foundation. She is the fourth UGA student in a row to win the scholarship, which is awarded to academically outstanding undergraduate immigrants.
The Merage Foundation for the American Dream provides up to $20,000 over a two-year period for recipients with stellar academic and leadership records to pursue their individual American dreams through educational or professional advancement. Patel is one of 12 recipients selected from nominations submitted by 22 partner universities.
Patel, who came to the U.S. at 14 from Sambalpur, India, would like to become a genetics professor and research scientist. She will enter the Ph.D. program at Columbia University in the fall. In preparation, Patel has spent her entire undergraduate career in research, first gaining experience through the Honors Program’s Center for Undergraduate Research Opportunities.
For the first two years at UGA, Patel worked as a CURO biomedical apprentice and then a summer fellow in Scott Gold’s plant pathology laboratory. Among her research contributions, Patel designed her own investigation focused on a fungal pathogen that could be used as a biological agent to control Chinese privet, a harmful exotic weed in Georgia. Patel has made presentations of this research at CURO’s spring undergraduate research symposia and CURO’s international research symposium in Costa Rica.
For the past two years, she conducted stem cell research in the laboratory of Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar Steven Stice. She has studied how neural progenitor cells can be used as neurons in potential treatments for neurodegenerative diseases.