Class of 1978 Scholarship
Updated 1/17/07
Below is a letter from the winner of the Class of 1978 Scholarship for the year 2006, Joshua Pothen.
Academic Year 2006-2007
Dear Class of 1978,
Many thanks for your generous scholarship.
I am a student from Yorktown, VA. My parents are both from India, but I was born and raised all my life in the United States.
I have felt called to be a doctor ever since I was young, and have been interested in orthopedic surgery for many years. I am a Computer Science major in the College of Engineering, and plan on using that to research modeling of the musculoskeletal system. My goal is to create a scanning technique so that we can model a patient's musculoskeletal system virtually, which could be used to simulate orthopedic operations so that doctors could better predict how to treat a patient. Thus I plan on applying for an MD-PhD program.
I have performed research in marine organic geochemistry, which taught me how to become acquainted with a new research field and allowed me to do publishable work. I also have interned at a Public Health Center in Newport News, VA, which gave me an overview of many different fields of practicing medicine and helped me learn about medical issues in the United States.
Over this past summer, however, I was a Software Intern for the Laboratory of Molecular Pharmacology at the National Cancer Institute at NIH. This gave me an insight into the field of biochemical pathway modeling, and gave me the opportunity to help begin collaborating on developing a software tool that will help create a standard way of modeling biochemical pathways.
I also have an interest in the humanities, and have made it a point to take courses in different fields such as art history, Asian religion, English literature, etc. I hope that this will help me become a better writer and communicator, which will help me deal with different medical and bioethical issues. In particular, I hope that I will be able to use these skills to improve the health care system structure in this country.
Once again, thanks for your scholarship. It is an honor to receive it, and I hope to use it to further and improve medicine and medical issues.
Joshua Pothen
jjp38@cornell.edu