Melecia Wright, doctoral candidate in the Department of Nutrition at the UNC-Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, has been chosen as an International Student Research Fellow by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
Wright is one of 45 students from 18 countries who will receive fellowships in the amount of $43,000 per year to support the completion of their graduate degrees. This year marks the first time Wright’s home country of Jamaica has been represented within the fellowship program.
HHMI established the International Student Research Fellowships in 2011 to support international students attending graduate school in the United States. Since then, the Institute has invested $20.8 million in the program, and is currently supporting a total of 231 students from 46 countries.
“We are fortunate that some of the most talented young scientists from around the world choose to come to the U.S. for their graduate work,” said David Asai, senior director of undergraduate and graduate programs at HHMI. “It is a pleasure to recognize the HHMI International Student Research Fellows for their high level of scientific creativity, their potential to become scientific leaders and the effective guidance that they are receiving from their thesis advisers.”
The Institute chooses to fund the third to fifth years of graduate school because, by this time, most students have chosen a graduate advisor, identified a research project and demonstrated their potential for success in the lab.
Wright works as a graduate research assistant in the nutrition department, and is also working toward an epidemiology minor. Her adviser is Linda Adair, PhD, professor of nutrition at the Gillings School.
“Melecia has shown a remarkable level of maturity in the evolution of her career interest in public health nutrition,” Adair said. “She is focusing her studies and career on strategies to combat nutrition-related diseases in low-income country settings, and her dissertation research will explore how early-life dietary patterns relate to health. She will adopt a life-course perspective to study the role of protein intake in the Philippines, which is a judicious choice with important implications for informing health policy.”
Wright, who was selected for the fellowship from a pool of 329 applicants, came to UNC after earning a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology at Princeton University.
“I am elated about earning this fellowship,” she shared. “As a young scientist, it’s so heartening to know that senior researchers also find your work intriguing and think you show promise in the field.”
After completing her doctoral studies, Wright hopes to leverage data to design evidence-based strategies that reduce the risk of lifestyle diseases and improve population health.
“My professional goal is to apply knowledge generated from nutrition epidemiology research to public health practice,” said Wright, “particularly within the context of low- and middle-income countries.”
By Jennie Saia, Gillings School of Global Public Health
Published July 30, 2015.