Chemistry Senior Receives 2014 NSF Fellowship
Chemistry major, Dharati Joshi, who is doing honors research with Prof. Ramesh Jasti, has received a coveted NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Dharati has decided to pursue her graduate studies at UC Berkeley. (She had also received offers from Harvard, MIT, and Stanford among others.) Wherever she goes to continue her studies, Dharati knows here career plans. Simply put, she wants to advance and teach chemistry. Her research goal is to create useful compounds and materials that have applications in medicine, materials, and environmental research problems.
Since coming to BU in 2010, Dharati has managed to balance her studies (Dean’s List each semester) with her science outreach (to elementary students) with her passion for research. She has conducted research in three laboratories (the Nakanishi Group at Columbia University – where she was first author on a publication in the J. Nat. Prod; the Stephenson Group at BU; and, since 2013, in the Jasti Group). This experience has given her truly interdisciplinary training in natural products, medicinal chemistry, methodology develop
ment, organic synthesis, and materials science. It was her experience in the three labs that has fueled her interest in the innovative synthesis of useful products. For her application, her research essay was on “Carbon Dioxide Sequestration into Useful Polymers using Flow Chemistry.” What project she will actually focus on in graduate school is still unknown. What is a sure bet is that Dharati will make significant contributions to whatever area of chemistry she chooses to pursue.