Award-winning poster

Roman Sanchez, a biomedical sciences junior, has won the award for Outstanding Presentation of a Research Poster at the Capital of Texas Undergraduate Research Conference in Austin.

The conference took place Nov. 3 and over 100 students from different universities attended. It was organized by the Research Student Advisory Council, The Texas Undergraduate Research Journal and Senate of College Councils.

“The day of the conference, it was … an amazing experience,” Sanchez said. “… I worked with a lot of students who had the same … pathway as me, and everybody was doing very interesting research projects.”

He said that while at the conference, he met with professors and now has a better understanding of how to apply for graduate school and what kinds of programs different universities offer.

Sanchez’s research focused on using melatonin as a method of treatment for diabetes. This is the first time he has presented his research and won an award for it.

Melatonin can influence the growth of fat cells, according to his research.

Even though the research continues, Sanchez is hopeful that one day he can use it to treat people with diabetes at a lower cost. He decided to join the research because he knows how diabetes can impact people’s lives.

Sanchez started his research in Spring 2017, joining another student who was already working on the project. The student had to leave, and this left Sanchez as the principal investigator under the mentorship of Saraswathy Nair, an associate professor and chair of the Health and Biomedical Sciences department.

“I did a lot of different trials, and … I wasn’t able to get it … out of the baseline,” he recalls. “It took a while.”

Sanchez said his experiment required several trials to gather enough data for him to compose a research poster.

Currently, Sanchez has a Math and Science Academy high school student, Lucas Montoya, and a biomedical sciences junior, Tristan Cavazos, helping him with his research.

“I really do like the research,” Montoya said. “It’s really interesting to see how much planning there is, how much detail you have to think about.”

Montoya said students who join a research project must be committed.

“It is time consuming, but there are a lot of rewards to that,” he said. “It’s very satisfying and it helps you really have experience with how labs work and how to think critically.”

Montoya is interested in pursuing a career in genetics, and said that this research opportunity has helped him gain more experience and knowledge.

Nair and Sanchez have been working together since he joined the research experiment. Sanchez had to learn certain techniques used in the laboratory.

Nair said one of the research projects in her lab focuses on the molecular basis of diabetes and obesity.

“One of the things we study are fat cells, because they are highly metabolic cells, and diabetes is a metabolic dysfunction,” she said.

Nair said Sanchez did an excellent job when it came to organizing and setting up the award-winning poster.

“I’m very proud of him,” she said.

Sanchez believes that everyone is capable of achieving something with hard work, and encourages students to achieve their goals.

“I’m not the brightest, not the [best] student,” he said. “So, I feel like if you just put in all your effort and you are giving your full potential … you can get to the goal that you want to achieve.”