My Nonprofit Reviews

When my parents brought me to live in Kuwait in the 1990’s, evidence of the Gulf War was everywhere. The war-torn little country had been ransacked and ravaged, and though the fighting was over the trauma of that time would never be. Now, ten years later, I am back in the United States, in the Houston Medical Center, where I work this summer on a research project that is of paramount importance to me. In scientific terms, the goal of my summer research, which is partially supported by the Airlift Research Foundation, is to characterize and compare different materials for synthetic bone grafts to treat combat-related and civilian large-scale bone injury. What makes this work meaningful, though, is not just that I might better understand the chemical effects of different scaffolds. The true goal of my research is to better understand how to help people – real people who are suffering the way I saw people suffer when I was growing up in the Middle East. The beauty of this research is in its universal application: people of all nations will benefit from what I discover. This work excites me because I grasp its importance – every day when I come into the lab I picture those men and women and children whose entire lives could change for the better because of it. Spending my childhood in a country fresh out of war made me see suffering as part of the human condition. This research, though, helps me realize that it doesn’t have to be.

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