Announcing the inaugural DojoGrants cohort
Supporting five talented young researchers in their pursuit of cutting-edge biotechnology research
This September, we welcomed the inaugural cohort of DojoGrants scholars into our global community of emerging biotech leaders. DojoGrants is a program operating under Nucleate Dojo that is the first year-long, institution-agnostic life sciences research funding program for undergraduate students. Currently, undergrads are severely undersupported in academia — most students work unpaid, laborious positions, are treated like cogs in a machine, and have to work other part-time jobs to support themselves. DojoGrants aims to financially equalize the playing field for students in life sciences research, allowing for more diverse voices to step foot into the world of biotech.
Scholar selection
For our pilot launch in June 2023, we received over 130+ applications from undergraduate students across the U.S. and Canada to support 2023-2024 academic year research projects. Notably, our applicant pool consisted of 65% women-identifying, 26% Black, 18% Latinx/Hispanic, and 27% South/East Asian students, as a result of our outreach efforts. Out of this initial pool, we narrowed our shortlist down to 18 finalists and offered grants to five scholars supported by the Intuitive Foundation. With our commitment to supporting students who are low-income and/or identifying with underrepresented minority groups, we evaluated the applications via three main criteria: (1) character and motivations, (2) research aptitude, and (3) financial need.
In general, we were overwhelmed by the amount of emerging talent we saw in our applicants this round — students from all walks of life applied with fascinating research proposals, from women’s health, to synthetic biology, to neuroscience. We hope to support more projects in our future rounds, but for now, we have selected five students that we thought would make the most meaningful use of the DojoGrant award:
Ana Sofia Vargas Virella
Ana is a senior at Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico studying Biomedical Sciences with a minor in Psychology. With the DojoGrant, she is conducting research at the Bear Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to understand age-dependent synaptic plasticity. Her project involves manipulating synaptic connections to reopen the “critical period” of plasticity in adult amblyopic mice to promote recovery from amblyopia, a disorder that cannot be corrected after this time window closes. In the lab, she will be conducting literature searches, experiments, data analysis, and interpretation to advance the Bear Lab’s publications.
Dianna Solis
Dianna is a senior at California State University San Bernardino studying Biological Psychology. Here, she is conducting research into endometriosis and the quality of endometriosis healthcare treatment's impact on women's quality of life at Christina Hassija’s lab. Dianna is passionate about bringing awareness to misrepresented and misunderstood diseases that, with early intervention, can result in better quality of care for the patient. She hopes to expand her understanding into the field of genetics to understand how the body is directly changed by these conditions, and ultimately find new alternatives for treatments.
Eke Djibril
Eke is a sophomore at Howard University majoring in health science and on the pre-medicine track. Her research project for this academic school year is conducted under Dr. Somiranjan Ghosh at Howard University and on assessing cardiovascular disease risk in diabetic African Americans using a transcriptomic approach — an understudied research area. Her goal is to understand the specific pathobiology and key molecules involved in cardiovascular development in African Americans with type 2 diabetes. Aside from research, Eke enjoys playing basketball, exploring, reading, watching movies, and hanging out with friends.
Min Joo Kim
Min Joo is a senior at Vanderbilt University majoring in Biochemistry & Chemical Biology. For the past two years, she has been performing research in the Serezani Lab at Vanderbilt University on the topic “Beta-hydroxybutyrate regulation of metabolic stress responses to Staphylococcus aureus infection in macrophages during Type 1 diabetes”. With this grant, she will focus on an in vivo murine STZ model to explore the spatial correlations between metabolic gene expression in specific organ cells in Type 1 diabetic mice during Staphylococcus aureus infection. With a goal to become a physician-scientist, she hopes to gain an understanding of medical conditions while conducting research that will answer patient-focused health concerns.
Vansh Sethi
Vansh is a second-year pursuing a Computer Science degree with a minor in Chemistry at the University of Waterloo. He is currently working in the field of protein engineering, which encapsulates a wide variety of applications from drug discovery to synthetic biology. With the DojoGrant, he is working at the Shoulders Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology on a project that aims to take a functionality commonly found in prokaryotic cells that makes Rubisco (for photosynthesis) more efficient and bring it into common eukaryotic cell strains (e.g. rice, wheat, etc.), using energy-based simulations and machine learning. In his free time, Vansh likes to bike, play basketball and volleyball, and hang out with friends.
DojoGrants programming
Aside from funding, the DojoGrants cohort also receives 1:1 mentorship from a Nucleate-affiliated professional or graduate student and attends community events such as fireside chats and workshops. A huge thank you to all of our mentors who support our program:
Anna Chase, Head of Business Development at Profluent Bio
Avery Pong, Graduate Student at the University of California, San Diego
Brianah McCoy, Graduate Student at Arizona State University
Libère Jensen Ndacayisaba, Senior Computational Biologist at Vitra Labs
Lilibeth Ortega Pineda, Research Advisor at Eli Lilly
Sammi Sison, Graduate Student at the University of California, San Diego
Sandeep Kumar Mishra, Post-Doctoral Fellow at Yale University
Sasha Farina, Graduate Student at the University of California, Berkeley
Sezin Aday Aydin, Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Pennslyvania
Tamara Jafar, Graduate Student at Yale University
Support our next cohort
What’s next for DojoGrants? Our team is planning for a second cohort to support summer 2024 research projects, and applications will open next year. We hope to scale the number of students we can support and could use your help! Shoot us an email at dojo@nucleate.xyz if you are interested in collaborating with us on making more cutting-edge biotech research happen and empowering the next generation of biotech innovators. Every bit counts!
If you are an undergraduate student interested in applying for a DojoGrant, follow our updates on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, or check our website at dojo.nucleate.xyz/dojogrants.
YES
So awesome!!!