BME student receives prestigious Astronaut Scholarship
May 26, 2020—University of Minnesota Biomedical engineering major Marcos Zachary has been awarded a scholarship for the 2020-21 academic year by the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. The prestigious, competitive scholarship, initiated by the Mercury-7 astronauts, is awarded annually to outstanding sophomores and juniors who intend to pursue research-oriented careers in mathematics, engineering, and the natural and applied sciences.
The scholarship awards up to $10,000 for a year of undergraduate study. In addition, recipients will receive mentoring and professional development support, attend the Astronaut Foundation’s Innovators Gala in Washington D.C. and have the opportunity to participate in other Astronaut Foundation events.
About Zachary
Marcos Zachary of Inver Grove Heights has been studying the mechanobiology of lung fibroblasts with BME Professor Victor Barocas and Peter Bitterman, a professor in the Medical School and a member of the Masonic Cancer Center. Zachary plans to complete graduate degrees in medicine and engineering to pursue research in computational medicine.
Born in Libya, Zachary and his parents fled the country following the overthrow of Muammar al-Gaddafi in 2011. He arrived in Minnesota as a 10-year-old child with limited English and taught himself the language through hours of determined reading in the school library. By his senior year in high school, he was taking English literature at the University of Minnesota but his academic passion was for mathematics and computer modeling.
In his subsequent academic years, he volunteered in the lab of U of M Professor Beshay Zordoky, where he was introduced to systematic research; worked with Barocas and Bitterman, whose work on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) gave him the opportunity to engage in the mathematical modeling; and worked on a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded research experience at the Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine program at Johns Hopkins.
These experiences will be the basis for his University Honors Program thesis, which will involve creating a computational model of the IPF environment in the lungs to allow researchers to target key biomarkers for new therapeutic strategies and technologies.
In addition to his studies and research, Zachary is active in the University Honors Program and the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honors Society. With other Honors volunteers, he tutors students at Murray Middle School in science and math. He is also active in education and community service with St. Mary’s Coptic Orthodox Church and a founding member of the Conversation Club, where he enjoys talking with fellow students about a wide range of subjects.