Two Fordham juniors—Ashley Clemente and Amrita Das—were chosen to receive the Goldwater Scholarship, the most prestigious national award for undergraduates pursuing STEM research.
It’s the second consecutive time that two Fordham students have received the award, which is awarded annually to about 400 natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics students. A major requirement for the scholarship is a demonstrated body of research that a student has conducted since entering college.
Lorna Ronald, Ph.D., director of the Office of Fellowship Advising, said the consecutive wins show the strength of the STEM community at Fordham.
“It’s really exciting that we’ve been able to build that up over the last couple of years,” she said.
Combating Antibiotic Resistance
Clemente’s research explores how to design and develop peptides that can be used to influence DNA replication in bacteria, which can cause mutations that lead to antibiotic resistance. It’s a joint research project between chemistry professors Nicholas Sawyer and Elizabeth Thrall.
“My research so far this year has been looking at a peptide that has been known to inhibit the specific protein interaction involved in the replication of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which is the bacteria that causes tuberculosis,” she said.
“It’s a naturally occurring antibiotic peptide, but I’m seeing if I can improve upon it and make it synthetically.”
A native of Washingtonville, New York, Clemente said the opportunity to do research sealed her decision to attend Fordham. She hopes to pursue a Ph.D. in biochemistry.
For Sawyer, ambitious and enthusiastic students like Clemente are invaluable.
“Having ambition and enthusiasm for [a research project]provides the resilience to deal with challenges along the way,” he said.
“She’s skyrocketed in terms of not only managing her own project, but also in providing peer mentoring to junior students in the lab.”
Targeting Tumors
Das, a biochemistry major who also works for Fordham University Emergency Medical Services, is focused on developing peptide-linked molecules to target cancer tumors. She hopes to attend medical school upon graduation.
She co-authored three papers published in academic journals. In October, she was the lead author of one about peptides designed to target cancerous lung cells that was published in the journal Molecular Diversity.
In addition to biochemistry professor Ipsita Banerjee, Das shared authorship of the paper with Mary Biggs, who earned one of last year’s Goldwater scholarships. That kind of collaboration between students is not something she expected.
“I want to give a lot of credit to Mary because this past summer, she basically taught me everything,” she said.
She also credited Banerjee for pushing her to achieve more.
“She’s just an amazing mentor,” she said. “It’s because of her motivation and her belief in me that I did as much research as I did.”
Banerjee said she’s seen Das grow tremendously.
“One of the things that we look for in students is a willingness to put in the time, and last spring 2024, there were some techniques that Amrita needed to learn about, like cell culture,” she said.
“She came in during spring break, and we spent two whole days working on it. So she was very willing to learn, put in the effort, and stay focused.”
