To some students, doing lab work is a chore, an obligatory task they must do to scrape by in their respective science classes.
Arts & Sciences sophomore Sumit Kar likes lab work. He’s pretty good at it, too. In fact, the lab work he has been working on by himself over the past two summers has been nominated for a prestigious national award from the American Physiological Society.
Kar has been nominated for the David S. Bruce Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for his research with the brain and its reactions to heart failure. This is his second time being nominated.
“I am impressed with his sense of dedication, focus and drive,” said Dr. Bridget Keegan, associate dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. “He has the potential to really make a difference.”
Every year the American Physiological Society accepts 50 applications for the award from around the world. Of those applicants, the top 15 are selected to go to the annual Experimental Biology conference where they are interviewed by two panels of judges.
“The judges are the best physiologists in the country,” Kar said.
“They ask, ‘Why did you do this?’ And, ‘Why didn’t you do this?’ And, ‘Which is better?’
“You have to know the science behind your study and your system. You have to read the literature and see what others are doing in the same field.”
The conference will take place in New Orleans from April 18-22.
Over 15,000 scientists attend the conference every year.
Kar has been working on the same research for the past three years.
He started researching proteins in the brain his first summer out of high school. Kar has been working on figuring out which proteins in the brain are related to
heart failure.
He’s also been looking at whether exercise is a good treatment for heart failure.
“We implant a pacemaker in rabbits, and that’s how we give them heart failure,” Kar said. “We measure the proteins in their brain, and afterwards we exercise some
of them.”
Apart from receiving some brief training on how to use the facilities at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Kar conducts all of his research by himself. He designs all the protocol for the experiments and is involved in every step of the process.
“I started doing surgeries this summer, so I implemented the pacemakers myself,” Kar said.
Kar has discovered the protein in the brain that is related to heart failure.
“The angiotensen converting enzyme, that’s the one I found increases in heart failure,” Kar said.
“So if you want to target that and lower the expression of that protein with drugs, then that could be a good therapy. Also, exercise lowers that protein.”
He thinks that his research might affect how heart-failure patients recover.
“Usually patients with heart failure are told to just lay in bed,” Kar said. “But this study and others is showing that exercise is a big help in recovery.”
He is planning on getting his master’s and doctorate so he can continue his research.
Kar said he feels honored and excited that as an undergraduate, no matter how small his findings may be, he is getting the opportunity to do research that could one day lead to new discoveries and improve the lives of patients.