Making a Mark on Research
Ishita Shah has, in her own words, a passion for science. Just ask her about molecular biology, and as she talks about her research, her experience, and her time at UMBC, it becomes clear.
“My research is about bacterial transcription activation,” Shah said. “Mainly we study the bacterium E. coli. We look at oxidative stress responses and how certain transcription activators work and respond to stresses, and then regulate genes that combat superoxide and other oxidative stresses.”
A Ph.D. student in the molecular and cell biology program, Shah is co-author of several papers, most recently a 19-page entry published last October in the Journal of Molecular Biology. The paper, which she co-authored with her faculty mentor, Richard E. Wolf Jr., provides evidence for “pre-recruitment,” a new mechanism for regulating gene expression recently proposed by Wolf and his research group in the Department of Biological Sciences. “This work might change the way future textbooks write about regulation of bacterial transcription,” Shah said.
Born in India, Shah earned a B.S. in Biochemistry and Biotechnology from Saint Xavier’s college in Ahmedabad and an M.S. in Microbiology from the University of Baroda before making the move to UMBC. In 2000 she was accepted into the molecular and cell biology program with a full stipend, allowing her to concentrate on research.
While the diversity of academic and research programs convinced her to come, she credits hard work and great faculty support for her success. “Faculty support has been a key ingredient in my graduate studies because a perfect blend of guidance and independence forces the generation of new ideas which can result in developing new research designs,” Shah said.
Wolf says that Shah’s contributions to his research have been invaluable. “As a graduate student and a colleague, Ishita represents the best of the best. She’s bright, hard-working and creative. More importantly, she has an engaging personality and freely gives her time and energy to others in the lab who have questions or would like to take advantage of her vast research experience. She’s irreplaceable, but her mark on our lab and her field will remain for many years.”
Shah plans to finish her Ph.D. in the spring of 2005 and will begin a post-doctoral fellowship at the Hillman Cancer Center at the University of Pittsburg Cancer Institute.
(3/1/05)
