Florida International University senior Brian Ho has landed a prestigious job before graduation. Ho is among 16 undergraduate students in the U.S. who were awarded a scholarship from the National Institutes of Health, which includes a one-year, paid research position in Bethesda, Maryland when he graduates from college.
Ho, a biology major, was chosen for his academics and community service to his college and national programs. He participated in FIU’s MARC U-STAR fellowship, which provides minority students funding and support to conduct research as undergraduates and encourages them to pursue doctorates.
Ho also took part in the Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP), a national program that provides minority students summer research opportunities at renowned Howard Hughes Medical Institute labs.
As part of the program, Ho spent the 2015 summer researching protein response in yeast at the University of California San Francisco, and he spent the following summer researching E. coli at Columbia University.
Ho currently mentors two of FIU’s EXROP participants.
At FIU, Ho is a member of the Quantifying Biology in the Classroom (QBIC) program that provides students with an in-depth life sciences curriculum. In addition, he has spent the past three years researching genetics in professor Alexander Agoulnik’s lab.
Agoulnik said Ho demonstrates exemplary initiative and was instrumental in producing two of the lab’s widely cited publications.
He marveled at Ho’s work ethic and hired him as a full-time employee in the lab when financial issues forced Ho to take a year off from school.
“I’m glad I have such as person I can rely on,” Agoulnik said. “He’s very goal-oriented, and he’s a very mature guy. It’s one of the reasons we selected him at the beginning.”
Ho’s advisors depict him as adept but humble, saying he’s just happy to be able to pay his rent for another year while in school. Living on his own in Miami, his parents live in Antigua, where he was raised. The scholarship award will help him finish his senior year in school while focusing on research.
Agoulnik believes the NIH award will set Ho in the right path to jump start his career.
“It’s a unique opportunity to go out and have exposure to top-notch labs in the world,” he said. “The doors are open.”