Smruti Mahapatra, MSE, a second-year medical student at Tulane University School of Medicine, has been awarded a Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship from the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. The fellowship provides financial support to Mahapatra for a year while she works on her research project, with additional funds available for presentations at national conferences and meetings.
Mahapatra’s project, Understanding the relationship between uterine artery vasodilation and placental oxygenation, seeks to investigate the pathogenesis of preeclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal mortality. She aims to use spherical photoacoustic imaging to create a 3D computational model of preeclampsia to understand the effect of stressors and possible therapeutics on blood flow and placental oxygen transport. Her mentor is Carolyn Bayer, PhD, Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Tulane University, and her lab specializes in developing novel medical imaging methods to study the dynamics of molecular expression and physiological function.
Mahapatra earned a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. While pursuing her research thesis in a multidisciplinary lab at Johns Hopkins University, Mahapatra worked with physician-scientists, which led her to consider a life in medicine.
“I was genuinely inspired by their unique ability to augment patient care with research and innovation,” she said. “I’m fascinated by the mysteries of the central nervous system, and I hope to become a neurosurgeon in the future.”
The fellowship is named after Carolyn L. Kuckein, a long-time administrator of AΩA and an honorary member of the society, who died in 2004. Only one student from each school is nominated to receive the award each year.