When Hardeep Phull began his undergraduate research in plant sciences, he had no idea that within a few short years he'd be collaborating with scientists at a university lab in Poland.

Phull, who left in August for his overseas assignment in Bydgoszcz, Poland, is doing genetic research at the University of Technology and Agriculture through Biomedical Research Abroad: Vistas Open!, part of the University of Arizona's Undergraduate Biology Research Program.

"The purpose of BRAVO!," explains Carol Bender, director of the Undergraduate Biology Research Program, "is primarily to integrate our research-experienced students into the international scientific community."

BRAVO! began more than 10 years ago, when UBRP student Anthony Stazzone attended a seminar by Azza Gabr, an Egyptian pediatrician doing research at the UA. "Like Dr. Gabr, Tony was working with Cryptosporidium and Giardia and felt that he would not only learn a lot by traveling to Egypt to work with Dr. Gabr and her colleagues but that he also had something to contribute to them scientifically," says Bender, "And he was right."

'Scientific feet on the ground'
UA BRAVO! participants are supported by grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health. They must have at least six months of research experience "and, since they go on their own to represent us, they must be emotionally mature," says Bender.

"The application process requires students to write a proposal for the work they will do and to explain their plan to a selection committee," she adds. "We want to be sure the students have their ‘scientific feet on the ground' ... that they're well versed in the science before they end up in a situation where everything else -- including language and culture -- is different."

Their stay varies from 10 weeks to 11 months, says Bender, "but most go for three months during the summer."

More than 110 students have participated, conducting research in some two dozen countries on six continents.

"The BRAVO! program has enabled me to send a steady stream of both undergraduate and graduate students to Peru to work on parasite problems among children of the slums surrounding Lima," says Charles Sterling, professor of veterinary science and microbiology. "For most of these students it is the first time they have been out of the United States and definitely their first experience with such abject poverty and its association with diseases."

One of Sterling's students, Margarethe Stringham, spent the summer in Peru "working on a protozoan parasite infection -- Giardia -- in children and their pets," says Sterling, explaining that the infection can stunt children's growth and learning.

Transcontinental exchange
BRAVO! also brings foreign students to the UA. "Until 1997," Bender explains, "the program was not a true ‘exchange' because we did not have the means to support foreign students of our international collaborators coming here to do research. But when our RAIRE grant application was approved we had about $20,000 per year to bring foreign graduate students to work in our labs for up to six months. This reciprocity was especially valuable for students from developing or former Eastern Bloc countries where research funds are particularly short."

It was in David Galbraith's plant sciences lab that Hardeep Phull met Iwona Jedrzejczyk, a student of Elwira Sliwinska at the University of Technology and Agriculture in Bydgoszcz, Poland. Sliwinska had worked with Galbraith at the UA for a year. "Elwira sent us Iwona," says Bender, "and Iwona and Hardeep worked closely in the Galbraith lab. Now Hardeep is spending the fall semester working in Elvira's lab."

Phull sees the experience as having a "positive impact" on his "perspective on life" and his future medical career. "Since our lab at the UA is one of the few that uses microarray technology," he explains, "we often have visitors from other labs who come to learn the techniques and apply them to their own research." In Sliwinska's lab, he adds, "one of the areas they study is sugar-beet genetics. We want to use the microarray to determine gene expression patterns in this plant and find the genes responsible for sucrose accumulation and root size."

'Outside their comfort zone'
BRAVO! is unique in the U.S., says Bender. "The few programs that exist to provide international-research experiences for undergraduates typically send students in a group to work on a single project together. I feel that students get much more out of the experience when they have to operate outside their comfort zone by traveling alone rather than in a group. Our model can both benefit the student and advance science."

It also tends to spawn additional international experiences.

UA senior Mark Fernandez spent last fall and winter at the University of Ulm in Germany. "While he was there, he and another BRAVO! student, Nikki Jarrett, took part in an ethics conference at Institut Pasteur in Paris," Bender relates. "On the strength of an article Mark and Nikki wrote about the conference, they have been invited to participate in a similar conference in Kathmandu at the end of November." The two will attend, adds Bender, "if the political situation in Nepal is stable."

Hiram "Manny" Albino, now a UA medical student, was a BRAVO! student in Switzerland one summer and then was invited back at the Swiss lab's expense to finish his project.

Anthony Stazzone, after returning from Egypt, obtained an American Heart Association grant to do research in Italy.

Theresa Isaias was a BRAVO! student in Brazil who later, as a medical student, "found a way to go to Tanzania to participate in a clinical experience," says Bender.

Another BRAVO! alumnus was the keynote speaker for the 13th annual Undergraduate Biology Research Program Exposition Jan. 12, where 100 UA undergraduate biology researchers presented their work to professors, friends, and family in the conference's poster session. Christina Martinez, now an internal-medicine resident at the University of California--San Francisco, worked in physiology professor William Dantzler's lab. "She then went to Wurzburg, Germany," says Bender, "to work in the lab of Dr. Stefan Silbernagl, one of Dr. Dantzler's collaborators."

International collaboration at all levels has never been more important, Bender emphasizes. "The mobility allowed by air travel puts worldwide populations at risk for infectious diseases. Other global threats include environmental degradation, population pressure and overuse of natural resources. Culturally sensitive people with scientific training, working in teams, will be a big part of the solutions to these problems."

‘Life-altering'
"Our students have been great ambassadors," says Michael Wells, professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics. "Foreign colleagues who have hosted one of our students want another. And [the students] all say that it has been a life-altering experience. One BRAVO! student, Jorge Zamora, was in a lab in Japan and was so taken by the experience that he wants to return for postdoctoral work when he finishes his Ph.D."

Hardeep Phull appreciates the importance of his assignment -- for both the opportunity it offers and the responsibility it entails. "It is a wonderful opportunity not only to participate in meaningful research," he says, "but also to learn more about another culture and develop relationships with people from other parts of the world."