Contact: Aga Haupt
For the second time in two years, a Mississippi State University student is receiving a Fulbright grant to conduct bioengineering research abroad.
Misti L. Marr of Ocean Springs will spend the next year at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She will study the effects of injecting stem cells into the brains of animals experimentally infected with Parkinson's disease.
"The Fulbright is among the most prestigious research opportunities afforded to students or faculty members," said associate professor Joel A. Bumgardner, Marr's faculty adviser. "It provides an outstanding professional and cultural learning experience."
As Marr prepares to depart, MSU biomedical graduate student Chad Winter of Pontotoc is completing a nine-month research fellowship at the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Winter's study of bone cell response to mechanical strain has a goal of advancing the understanding of orthopedic implants and drug delivery.
During Marr's Fulbright study, she hopes to show that the regeneration of neuronal pathways can be controlled, and, in the long term, offer an effective treatment of Parkinson's disease and other neurodegenerative disorders.
Last year, the biological engineering major also studied at Monash University as the only North American student in Australia in the Global Engineering Education Exchange Program.
Marr, the daughter of Lynn P. Bagwell of Starkville and Phillip Marr of Ocean Springs, is a 1998 Ocean Springs High School graduate who received her bachelor's degree from MSU last month. Upon her return to the United States, she will attend graduate school at the University of California at Irvine.
Winter, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Dean Winter, is a 1994 Pontotoc High School graduate. He graduated from MSU with a degree in bioengineering in 1998 and will complete a master's degree from MSU this summer.
Because of the Fulbright experience, "these students will be at the top of their fields and they will have improved understanding of different people, different countries, and different cultures," Bumgardner said, noting the importance of the two-way cultural and intellectual exchange that sends American students abroad and brings in foreign students.
The Fulbright Program is an international exchange program created by Sen. J. William Fulbright of Arkansas. About 4,500 new grants are given internationally each year.