This summer, CPB concentrator Brittany Petros will travel to Lisbon, Portugal as a Fulbright Scholar. In the lab, she'll be investigating the connection between nutrition and the nervous system at the Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown. Petros, who is of Portuguese descent herself, is the recipient of the 2018 Fulbright/Luso-American Foundation Research/Study Award.
Her Fulbright-supported research will build off work she started as a summer research fellow in Carlos Ribeiro's lab at Champalimaud in 2016. During that first summer, she studied whether mutations in a protein kinase called GCN2 affected fruit flies' food consumption. Petros says that next year she will be "reversing" her strategy by quantitatively measuring gene expression to uncover more connections between food and neurons. "Over the summer [of 2016], I manipulated the genetic makeup of the fruit flies and studied their corresponding feeding phenotypes. Over the next year, I will manipulate the dietary conditions that the fruit flies will be provided, and computationally study the changes in their gene expression," she explains.
Those who know the budding physician scientist well weren't terribly surprised to hear she was awarded the Fulbright grant. "I am so happy to hear that Brittany Petros was awarded the Fulbright!" says Assistant Director of Undergraduate Studies (MCB/CPB) Dominic Mao.
Petros also cites MCB 60, taught by Alex Schier and Vlad Denic, as one of the classes that sparked her interested in the relationship between molecular biology and health. Her experiences doing computational research with the Clemons and Schreiber groups at the Broad Institute and learning and teaching probability in Statistics 110 helped her develop a quantitative skill set that she intends to apply to biomedical questions.
When she's not in the lab, Petros can frequently be found running. She will be running the 122nd Boston Marathon on April 16 to raise funds for the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA) Summer Urban Program (SUP) and looks forward to runs with the Nike+ Run Club Lisboa along the Tagus River. She has served as a teaching assistant for Life Sciences 1a, Physical Sciences 1, Chemistry 17, and Statistics 110, and plays the flute and piccolo in the Harvard Pops Orchestra. She is a member of the 2017 Phi Beta Kappa Junior 24 and a Harvard Amgen Scholar.