Hannah Barsouk, an MB&B undergraduate in the Breaker Lab, was one of three Yale students selected as a 2024 Barry Goldwater scholar. This scholarship, named for the late U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater, is awarded to students who intend to pursue research careers in the fields of natural sciences, engineering, and mathematics. Barsouk was selected among a pool of 5,000 high achieving sophomores and juniors to receive this award, which is supported by the Goldwater Foundation and by a partnership with the U.S. Department of Defense National Defense Education Program (NDEP).
Barsouk has been a research student in the Breaker Lab for over three years. Their current research surrounds the role of an Ornate, Large, Extremophilic (OLE) class of non-coding RNAs in ribosome stalling and cell growth rate in bacteria. OLE RNAs form a ribonucleoprotein (RNP) complex which is required for cell adaptation to diverse stress conditions. As part of their project, Barsouk showed that disruption of the OLE RNP complex confers increased resistance to ribosome-stalling antibiotics, which they believe may be due to a role for the OLE RNP in modulating cell growth rate and in turn antibiotic susceptibility, in response to stress.
Before attending Yale, Barsouk had the unique opportunity as a high school student to work as a paid research assistant in the O’Donnell Lab at the University of Pittsburgh, researching alternative energy utilization pathways that are conserved from yeast to humans. They credit this opportunity as having fundamentally shaped their trajectory in science from a young age.
Barsouk is heavily involved in the MB&B community, serving as a peer mentor and peer tutor for the department. Additionally, Hannah is passionate about scientific outreach, given that her first exposure to the Breaker Lab came from a YouTube recording of an “RNA World” talk from Science on Saturdays by Dr. Breaker. Barsouk serves as co-president for the outreach branch (Synapse) of the Yale Scientific Magazine. In this role, they connect New Haven middle and high school students to Yale science resources by organizing outreach events like a national high school essay contest and Science on Saturdays. They also serve as a Public School Intern, where they worked at Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School for the last two years. There they taught biology and chemistry classes and helped create an LGBTQ+ resource center at the school affiliated with the Yale Office of LGBTQ+ Resources.
After graduation, they intend to pursue a Ph.D. in Biochemistry, where they hope to continue studying ancient biology and the molecular evolution of life.
The department is proud of Hannah for her achievements and her deep involvement in the MB&B community. Congratulations Hannah on this well-deserved award!
By: Shravani Balaji