Anusha Malik
Anusha Malik is a biochemistry student in the College of Arts and Sciences and the Honors College at FGCU. Anusha serves across campus as the President of the Chemistry Club and the Social Media and Public Relations Manager of Project Narrative, a student organization. Anusha is a co-founder of the Food Options Project and a recipient of the Millennium Fellowship. Throughout all of her involvements, she is also an inductee into the FGCU 2023 Hall of Fame. Anusha is a recipient of the Barry Goldwater Scholarship for her research in creating non-toxi gene transfection reagents for anti-cancer drug delivery systems.
How did you mentor(s) encourage and foster your research and academic trajectory?
The moment I met Dr. Mirjafari, I knew he would support me in whichever career path I intended to pursue. He supported my goals to pursue medical school every step of the way by providing me with the right opportunities, allowing me to take lead of my own research project, and consistently teaching me new lab techniques and life lessons. To this day he still accepts every request I ask of him without hesitation to show that he wants me to use my full potential to succeed.
What does the OCF mean to you?
The OCF is one of the greatest reasons I have made it as far as I have at FGCU. They fostered my journey in application writing and pushed me to participate in activities I would not have thought of before. They encouraged me to be my most unique self and how to showcase it in every project I am a part of. I met a family through the OCF full of faculty and friends who gave me unconditional support for all of my ambitions and future goals.
What is the Goldwater Scholarship?
The Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship is one of the oldest and most prestigious national scholarships in the natural sciences, engineering and mathematics in the United States, seeks to identify and support college sophomores and juniors who show exceptional promise of becoming this Nation’s next generation of research leaders in these fields.
