UA Student Scholar Presenting at National Symposium

Ahmed Badran has been selected as one of the few students who will present research during this month's Beckman Scholars Symposium, which is part of a nationally competitive program.

Ahmed Badran, University of Arizona senior, has been selected to give a platform presentation during a conference in California that is drawing researchers and scholars from across the country.

Badran, an Honors College student involved in the UA's Undergraduate Biology Research Program, was selected to be an Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation scholar and will present his research at the the foundation's conference this month.

About 100 students from across the United States will present during the 2009 Eleventh Annual Beckman Scholars Symposium, which is being held July 23-25 in Irvine, Calif.

Of particular note – Badran, who is majoring in molecular and cellular biology and also biochemistry and molecular biophysics, is one of only six Beckman Scholars selected to present during the symposium.

Carol Bender, director of the Undergraduate Research Biology Program, said it is quite an accomplishment for Badran to be selected to present during the conference.

"The audience consists of Beckman Scholars and their mentors from around the country and there are usually at least a couple of Nobel Laureates in the audience," Bender noted.

She noted that this is the second consecutive year that a UA student who is a Beckman Scholar has been selected to speak during the symposium.

The Beckman Scholars Program provides scholarships to institutions that are then responsible for selecting scholars, who then receive $17,600 in funding for two summers and one academic year.

The scholarships are meant to "contribute significantly in advancing the education, research training and personal development of select students in chemistry, biochemistry, and the biological and medical sciences," according to the foundation's Web site.

"The sustained, in-depth undergraduate research experiences and comprehensive faculty mentoring are unique in terms of program scope, content and level of scholarship awards."

The symposium is drawing student scholars and researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, Stony Brook University and numerous other institutions from around the nation to present their work in areas that include chemistry, nanotechnology, physics, electrical engineering and other disciplines.

Indraneel Ghosh, a UA associate professor of chemistry and also biochemistry and molecular biophysics, will accompany Badran, who will present his project, titled "Seeing DNA: A New Approach for the Direct Detection of dsDNA and its Chemical Modifications."

Another UA Honors College student, Troy Comi, a chemistry senior and a Beckman Scholar, will present a poster during the symposium.

In Ghosh's laboratory, Badran is studying double stranded DNA, or dsDNA, sequences and trying to develop a quicker and more practical method for being able to read the chemical makeup in the sequences.

Ultimately, the researchers want to be able to detect specific sequences of DNA or their chemical modification to aid in early disease detection and possible prevention.

Ghosh, the UA's Emily Davis and Homer Weed Endowed Chair, and his colleagues have developed DNA Sequence Enabled Reassembly, or SEER, toward that end, which Badran will present during the symposium.

"We definitely made a significant improvement in the time required to do something like this," said Badran, who has been serving as a student researcher at the UA since the summer after his junior year at Tucson Magnet High School.

"With an approach like this, it opens the door to detection on a significantly smaller scale than previously demonstrated using similar protein-based techniques," he said.

While Badran has presented at conferences and fairs and also has co-authored manuscripts in the past, he said presenting during the Beckman symposium will be a boon to his career as a researcher.

"I thought this would be a good experience considering the prestigious nature of the scholarship, as well as the caliber of people who will be there," he said. "Not only will it be a good experience, but this is a good way to get my name out there."