W&J student, C-M grad receives prestigious NIH scholarship
Courtesy of Washington & Jefferson College
Alondra Martinez Osorno received a grant from the National Institutes of Health in the fall of 2020.
Courtesy of Washington & Jefferson College
Alondra Martinez Osorno works on culturing heart cells during her 2019 internship at Binghamton University.
Washington & Jefferson College senior Alondra Martinez Osorno was one of just 15 students in the nation who was named to The National Institutes of Health’s Undergraduate Scholarship Program for 2020.
The program pays a significant portion of her undergraduate tuition and she will participate in a 10-week summer internships, and work in the NIH Intramural Research Program for one year upon graduation, according to a news release from W&J.
“I’d come so far with the application and I was just thinking ‘I need to get it.’ I really wanted it. I didn’t want to put semi-finalist on a resume,” she said. “I got my email and contract and I just cried happy tears. I cried for a moment, I thanked God, and then I told my family and friends.”
A graduate of Canon-MacMillan High School, Martinez Osorno is a senior biophysics and French double major at W&J. She is a first generation college student whose family is originally from Mexico, the release said.
“The more you interact with diverse people, the more you diversify your ideas. That expands your perspective, your input, your consideration for other people,” she said. “It makes you a more wholesome person, and I think it also helps normalize diversity. It shouldn’t have to be a big deal but it is, because progress still needs to be made. If you have a community that’s socioeconomically diverse and racially diverse then you can strengthen your connections with your community and beyond.”
Martinez Osorno plans to attend graduate school for biomedical engineering, and use her interdisciplinary background to pursue a career in biomedical field business.
As a freshman, Martinez Osorno served as a student research assistant at W&J, working alongside chemistry professor Dr. Patricia Brletic to synthesize cobalt crystals for an inorganic chemistry class, the release said.
Following her sophomore year, she was accepted into Binghamton University’s biomedical engineering research experience for undergraduates, a 10-week experience in which she worked on a project that examined how alcohol affects fetal cardiac cells. That same summer, she spent three weeks working at a hospital in Leuven, Belgium, where she was a visiting research student in fetal medicine, the release said.
Martinez Osorno completed an online internship studying biomaterials through the University of California San Diego bioengineering department during the summer of 2020, the release said.