Junior heading for med school wins UNCF-Merck Scholarship

Lorne Murray

Lorne Murray, a UW junior majoring in microbiology, is one of 15 recipients this year of the highly prestigious United Negro College Fund (UNCF)-Merck Undergraduate Science Research Scholarship Award. These extremely competitive national awards are part of the UNCF-Merck Science Initiative, which aims to increase the pool of highly trained, well-qualified African American research scientists in the biomedical and related scientific disciplines.

Murray will receive up to $35,000 to support his college education. The award includes stipends for his participation in two eight-week summer internships at a Merck research facility on the East Coast, as well as a maximum of $25,000 to cover his educational costs during his senior year.

Murray believes the internship experiences he had in the Health Sciences Minority Students Program contributed greatly to his winning the Merck scholarship and to his competitiveness for medical school. Since his major is microbiology, that department was also awarded a maximum of $10,000 to support research and scholarships for students.

Murray attributes his academic success and career interests to a number of research opportunities that were made available to him at the UW. He participated in the National Institutes of Health-funded Research Apprentice Program (RAP) and the Stipends for Training Aspiring Researchers (STAR) program, directed by Karlotta J. Rosebaugh and Dr. Carmela Washington-Harvey of the Health Sciences Minority Students Program.

“Lorne exemplifies the type of student our programs are designed to serve. That is, students who are interested in pursuing careers in the sciences but need opportunities that both support and nurture their career choices,” Rosebaugh said.

As a RAP participant in the summer of 1994, Murray feels fortunate to have worked with Dr. Warren Ladiges in the Department of Comparative Medicine, conducting research in transgenic mice.

“My own personal project was trying to grade the size of the female mouse reproductive organ and correlating this with the number of offspring produced following in vivo impregnation,” Murray explained.

RAP students, mostly high school juniors and seniors, come to campus for about six weeks beginning in late June for a program that includes special classes, tours and individual research experiences in labs.

The following two summers, he was selected as a STAR program participant and worked in the research labs of Dr. Michael Portman in the Division of Pediatric Cardiology and Dr. Jashvant Unadkat in the Department of Pharmaceutics. These experiences provided Murray with the opportunity to use NMR spectroscopy to study the effects of the drug HOE 642 on phosphate metabolite preservation following local tissue ischemia and to perform research to determine the presence of a nucleobase transporter in the human intestinal brush border membrane.

Undergraduates who have successfully completed at least their freshman year are eligible for STAR, which provides 12-week biomedical research internship positions to talented students from underrepresented groups. Along with the research experience, the program includes a seminar series and tours at the UW and other sites in the Puget Sound area. STAR students receive a stipend and some support for travel expenses.

He is now working on a research project with Dr. Thomas E. Trumble in the Department of Orthopaedics and is co-author on two research articles pending publication.

“In retrospect,” Murray said, “I have a heightened appreciation for the value of these research experiences and the confidence they have given me as I near graduation and begin applying for medical school. Before coming to the UW, my main worry was whether I was entering a school too large for students to become involved and distinguish themselves from other students. The summer research experiences and working with UW faculty have enabled me to explore and broaden my experiences in science and provided me with a strong foundation I can build on following graduation.”

In addition to his summer research work and classes, Murray has been active in several campus groups. He routinely devotes about 10 hours a week to tutoring in the UW Instructional Center. He is also a founder of the Minority Pre-Medical Society on campus. “Participating in several extracurricular activities in addition to my course load keeps me focused on my goals and also provides a release from the academic stresses faced throughout the year,” he noted.

Murray is the son of Mary Gilbert of Bremerton, who works at UW Medical Center-Roosevelt. ¶