Graduate School student awarded prestigious research fellowship by HHMI

By Lin Lofley

 Rashmi Voleti
Rashmi Voleti

Rashmi Voleti, a fourth-year student in the UT Southwestern Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, has been named one of 20 International Student Research Fellows by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

Ms. Voleti, who works in the laboratory of Dr. Jose Rizo-Rey, Professor of Biophysics, of Biochemistry, and of Pharmacology, will receive $43,000 during each year of her HHMI fellowship. The Institute has invested more than $23 million in the program cumulatively and currently supports 251 students from 47 countries.

“I am grateful to the molecular biophysics program and to UT Southwestern for nominating me for this program,” said Ms. Voleti, a native of Hyderabad. “Working on the grant with Dr. Michael Rosen, Chairman of Biophysics, and Dr. Rizo-Rey was a great learning experience for me, and I also want to thank the HHMI for giving me this opportunity.”

A Biotechnology graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), she praised the rigor of her alma mater for helping her to become a strong early-career researcher.

“The first thing I realized at IIT was that the people are very smart,” Ms. Voleti said. “Everyone there wanted to be either an engineer or a doctor.”

She completed the biotechnology program, and excelled in it, and after graduation she served an internship in Germany before joining the lab of Dr. Rizo-Rey to study proteins that mediate membrane fusion at synapses. Ms. Voleti said she is interested in understanding how calcium triggers the fusion of synaptic vesicles to the plasma membrane.

“[Dr. Rizo-Rey] is a wonderful mentor,” she said. “When I got here, he sat down with me to discuss the work, and I immediately thought ‘This is a really cool problem.’”

The 20 HHMI honorees came from a group of 344 students who submitted 2016 applications. Those documents were reviewed by a panel of scientists and graduate educators in order to arrive at the awardees.

Ms. Voleti is now settled into life in the U.S., although she said it took some time.

“It was a cultural shock to me to see the relative lack of people around me,” Ms. Voleti said. “The population of Hyderabad is about 8 million, and there is someone around you no matter where you are or what time of day it might be.

“When I first arrived at UT Southwestern, I had no car so I walked to school most days. I would walk and look around me and I saw no one else walking. That was different to me.”

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Dr. Rizo-Rey holds the Virginia Lazenby O’Hara Chair in Biochemistry.

Dr. Rosen holds the Mar Nell and F. Andrew Bell Distinguished Chair in Biochemistry.