Recent graduate sherry fan ’21 (Nutritional Science and Biological Science) has common interests shared by many people: a vast appreciation for science, love for food and nutrition, and a general desire to do good. But what sets Fan apart is the action she is taking to seek change for a better world. The daughter of immigrants from China, Sherry grew up in Montgomery County, Md, and was constantly motivated to help those in dire need.
“My father came from very poor conditions in rural China, and growing up, I always heard stories from him not having enough food or access to clean water, so the service aspect of nutrition was very meaningful to me,” said Fan.
She started her career at UMD as a Biological Sciences major, but quickly added the Nutritional Science major to help further broaden her scientific horizons.
“Initially, adding another major was for very curious reasons— I wanted to personally eat healthier,” said Fan. “After taking some nutrition classes to test the waters, I quickly realized that there are so many valuable things to learn. I could see how basic science plays out at a societal level to make a community healthier.”
Fan took her commitment to food security to another level by becoming engaged outside of the classroom. Since her freshman year, she was a member of the Food Recovery Network, a nation-wide organization started at UMD to collect unused food and donate it to those in need. Fan held multiple roles within the university chapter, and also joined the student group, Tzu Ching, to feed the homeless at shelters in Washington, DC.
“It was really an eye opening experience for me because I hadn't interacted with that type of community before,” said Fan. “Just being able to go and meet these individuals, it really showed me the conditions that they were living in, and I also realized that they're not really so different from you and me.”
Fan’s dedication to science and community didn’t end there. She also served as a research assistant in professor Wenxia Song’s lab for three years, uncovering the cellular relationship between obesity, chronic inflammation, and insulin resistance. It was because of her dedication and outstanding academic, research, and outreach experience that she was awarded the University Medal at this year’s campus-wide spring commencement.
Alongside her academic work and many accomplishments, Fan still found time to enjoy her other hobbies. As an avid artist, she often spent time making doodles and illustrations. As she became more fascinated with science, she found ways to incorporate what she was learning into her drawings.
Something that she did for fun quickly turned into some- thing bigger. As a part of the worldwide art challenge, Inktober, Fan participated by creating illustrations that went along with the daily competition prompts. When the time came to make a drawing that represented the word “slippery,” she saw a way to bring together her scientific knowledge and artistic capabilities.
“Slippery was one of the prompt words, and being a science nerd, the first concept that came to mind was ribosomal frameshifting,” said Fan. “So I did my own illustration of that and, just for fun, sent it to a few professors, who then shared it with others.”
One of those people was Jonathan Dinman, chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at UMD. Dinman loved her illustration, and he had a paper coming out on frameshifting in coronaviruses, so he asked Fan if she could modify her artwork to be specific for coronavirus. She gladly obliged, and the illustration was published with the paper in the scientific journal, Virology.
Fan has loved to doodle since high school and sees it as a part of her future. She’s always wanted to publish an educational children's book, and she has already illustrated three books as part of “Gift to Uplift,” a student group that partners with the National Institutes of Health Children’s Inn that makes books for children with rare diseases to help raise their spirits.
The next step for Fan will be to pursue a dual MD/PhD at Weill Cornell Medical College, where she wants to focus on patient care and research as a budding physician scientist. As her time at UMD has come to close, she’s extremely appreciative for the role nutrition and food science played in her academic development.
“It was really valuable for me to see how basic sciences played out in a community setting for my future as a physician scientist,” said Fan. “The nutrition major drove me to take biochemistry courses, and without it, I wouldn't have explored these areas. As I move forward to getting a PhD, this really helped influence my research interests."
By Andrew Muir