JL
Jaime Lisack
  • Biochemistry
  • Class of 2016
  • Goshen, NY

Ithaca College Student Jaime Lisack Receives Fulbright Award

2016 Apr 11

Ithaca College senior Jaime Lisack was awarded a received Fulbright to spend the 2016-17 academic year studying cell development at the University of Wurzburg, Germany.

The Fulbright Program is the flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government and is designed to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the people of other countries. It provides college seniors and recent graduates - chosen for their academic merit and leadership potential - with the opportunity to study, teach and conduct research, exchanging ideas and contributing to finding solutions to shared international concerns.

Lisack, who is majoring in biochemistry, will be studying polar bodies, which are three tiny cells that are the byproduct of uneven division during the creation of an egg cell. The laboratory where she will be studying has recently discovered that one of these polar bodies - once thought to be waste products - gets reabsorbed into the egg cell.

"The human body, a complex machine, wastes almost nothing in its functions," Lisack wrote in her Fulbright application. "The question then stands: Why would a cell go through the effort of excising something if it is just reabsorbed? But that is exactly what happens in the case of polar bodies. For example, do these polar bodies give signals to the maturing egg? Does this have an effect on a developing embryo? The answers to these questions would hold an incredible significance to our understanding of development, unlocking secrets of the early stages of an egg cell, which will eventually provide the information to form an organism."

Lisack will work with Ann Wehman, whose lab offers one of the cutting-edge environments in scientific innovation and discovery as part of theRudolf Virchow Center at the University of Wurzburg. A member of the Sigma Xi scientific research society and president of the Ithaca College Bio Club, Lisack intends to pursue a Ph.D. in molecular biology and work on discovering new genetic and disease therapies.