Dara Baker, third-year MD student at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences (SMHS), was named as a fellow in the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) 2019–20 Medical Research Scholars Program.
Baker is one of only 50 students chosen for the prestigious research training program, which allows students to take a year off from university studies to conduct basic, clinical, or translational research on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland.
During her research year, Baker is working in the National Eye Institute at NIH. Observing an eye surgery in her third year at SMHS really piqued her interest in the field, she said.
“What I love about the research in this field is its investigation in both local and systemic pathways of disease. Ophthalmology research encompasses molecular biology, bioinformatics, technology, biophysics, and many other overlapping fields of interest for me,” she said.
