Craig Pearson, MSU's 16th Marshall Scholar, has been admitted into the National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge Scholars program.
In the fall, Pearson will begin his doctorate in clinical neurosciences at the University of Cambridge funded by the Marshall Scholarship. His final two years will be spent working with a co-mentor at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md.
“It's a fantastic opportunity to build new relationships between laboratories in the U.S. and the U.K., and I'm thrilled to have the chance to work with two mentors and in two labs, while maintaining a cohesive focus on a single Ph.D. project,” Pearson said.
Launched in 2001, more than 150 of the United States' most promising biomedical Ph.D. students have been admitted to this unique program, which offers access to the insights and resources of multiple mentors at the three collaborating institutions. The requirement to integrate different mentor input stimulates student self-reliance and creativity. This access to senior faculty advising and a large, diverse graduate student population helps the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars build intellectual and personal skills, perspectives and peer networks.
Pearson, an Honors College senior, will graduate this semester with degrees in neuroscience and biochemistry and molecular biology from the College of Natural Science and English from the College of Arts and Letters.
He wants to develop treatments for blindness and other visual impairments. Pearson is from Bloomfield Hills, Mich., and graduated from University of Detroit Jesuit High School.
He entered MSU as an Alumni Distinguished Scholarship recipient and now serves as an undergraduate research assistant in the MSU Department of Small Animal Clinical Sciences and an undergraduate lab manager and lead undergraduate researcher for the MSU Digital Humanities and Literary Cognition Lab.
He has served as a clinical volunteer at the MSU Department of Neurology and Ophthalmology. Pearson also is the student managing editor for ReCUR, the Red Cedar Undergraduate Research Journal, and is the founder and managing editor of Exceptions: The Art and Literary Journal for Students with Visual Disabilities.
“We’re so proud of Craig’s accomplishments at MSU and know he will excel in his studies at Cambridge and with this additional opportunity through the NIH Oxford-Cambridge Scholars program,” said Cynthia Jackson-Elmoore, dean of the MSU Honors College.