Unlocking the brain’s mysteries
When she arrived at Clark University from the Kenyan capital of Nairobi, Krishna Gajjar ’25 vowed she would take advantage of every opportunity presented to her.
By the time she graduated this past May with her bachelor’s in biochemistry and molecular biology, she had more than fulfilled that pledge.
Gajjar is newly enrolled in the doctoral cell and molecular biology program at the University of Pennsylvania, with an eye toward a career in biomedical research. It’s an impressive journey that was made possible by the robust research experiences she enjoyed as a Clark undergrad, which took her from the University’s labs to Mass General Hospital/Harvard Medical School and a prestigious institute in Switzerland.
Her earliest days at Clark were an adjustment—not only to the University, but to the United States, a country she hadn’t previously visited.
“It was my first time in America,” Gajjar recalls. “It was a big change for me, but it wasn’t too hard to acclimate to my new environment.”
A Presidential Scholar, Gajjar arrived as a pre-med student with a desire to immerse herself in a research endeavor right away. She found that opportunity in the lab of Néva Meyer, professor of biology, whose research seeks to produce a deeper understanding of the central nervous system and its development.
In her first year, Gajjar was the inaugural recipient of the Plave Family Research Fellowship, established by Clark Trustee Lee Plave ’80 in memory of his wife, Ilene, who passed away from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) in 2017. The fellowship supports neuroscience research conducted in Meyer’s lab. Specifically, Gajjar studied how new neurons grow in the annelid worm Capitella teleta. “Many discoveries have been driven by fundamental, curiosity-driven research like this,” she says.
“I completely fell in love with research.”
“I was offered my own independent project, and it wasn’t until later that I realized how big a deal it is to be able to do a fully independent project as an undergrad,” Gajjar says. “I learned how to read scientific papers, design experiments, learn and execute techniques, and analyze and interpret results. I completely fell in love with research.”
During her time at Clark, Gajjar earned research funding from the Steinbrecher Fellowship Program, the Lisa Anne and Leo E. Beavers II Fellowship, and additional support from the Office of Identity, Student Engagement, and Access, and the Office of the Dean of the College.
“Clark really supported me in my endeavors,” Gajjar says, “and helped offset the financial costs so that I could concentrate on the research.”
The University’s twice-yearly academic showcase, ClarkFEST, gave her a platform to present and interpret her technical findings for a general audience of students, faculty, and staff. She presented six times at the event.
“Science communication is one of the most important things we do,” Gajjar says.
Some of her work has been done at Massachusetts General Hospital, in partnership with Harvard Medical School. There, Gajjar has worked as a research intern, studying the “gut-brain axis”—“specifically how all of the trillions of bacteria in the gut communicate with the brain and how this could be implicated in neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.”
Gajjar continues to analyze behavioral data and DNA sequencing for the project, working remotely. Among her collaborators is Dr. Marcy Kingsbury in the Lurie Center for Autism at MGH, which is funded by Jeffrey Lurie, a 1973 Clark alumnus and owner of the Philadelphia Eagles.
During the summer after her sophomore year, Gajjar was one of only 20 fellows from a global field of 800 applicants at the Swiss Federal Technology Institute of Lausanne.
“I worked in a lab that studied neurodegenerative disease; my project was focused on visualizing neurons,” using a specialized technique to label and manipulate individual neurons in the nervous system of fruit flies. “People from 19 countries came together to work in the summer fellowship program,” she remembers. “It was an amazing, life-changing experience.”
As she completed her undergraduate studies, Gajjar was honored with the Howard Bonar Jefferson Award as well as the American Chemical Society Biochemistry Undergraduate Award. Her robust undergraduate research portfolio, as well as strong mentorship and unwavering advocacy from Meyer and other professors in the Biology and Chemistry departments, helped earn Gajjar admission to the highly competitive UPenn program. The intense and productive research environments that both embraced and inspired her have begun preparing her for a career in biotech, where a new field of opportunities awaits.
Jim Keogh