Scott LaPlant

Description: Prarthana Dalal, a recent high school graduate whose research was funded by Recovery money, took top honors in an international competition for biotechnology students.

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​An 18-year-old student from Kansas City won a major international science award for research financed by Recovery Act funds from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, a division of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Prarthana Dalal won the International BioGENEius Challenge, a high school competition sponsored by the Biotechnology Institute in Washington, D.C.  She received the award last summer for her work with Dr. Kenneth Peterson at the University of Kansas Medical Center on a project involving hemoglobin genetics and the way sequence changes can affect fetal hemoglobin production in mice. Results of the project will aid in the treatment of sickle cell disease.

The supplies for Dalal’s research, conducted last year when she was a senior at Shawnee East Mission High School in Leawood, Kansas, were paid for with a $42,720 Recovery Act Summer Student Experience Award that Peterson received in July 2009. The Summer Student Experience Awards were made available to institutions and scientists with active NIH grants.

In addition to funding Dalal’s project, the money provided financial support for other students who worked in Peterson’s lab over summers and holidays the past two years.

Dalal is a freshman this fall at Northwestern University, enrolled in a combined BS/MD degree program. 

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