Rupal Shah Young Leader Award Pictured are Rupal Shah (center), Joy Bryant (left), executive director of alumni relations and Dr. David J. Spittal (right), president of Southern Wesleyan University

Rupal Shah grew up in Tanzania in East Africa in a small town at the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro. Her family immigrated to the United States and moved to Clemson, S.C., in 1999. She graduated from Southern Wesleyan in 2004 with a B.S. in biology and B.A. in chemistry and earned her master’s degree at Clemson University. She is now at Harvard University’s School of Public Health in Boston, Mass. She is in the Immunology and Infectious Diseases Department, where she works as a research assistant in the Tuberculosis Lab. She is conducting experiments on mycobacterium, studying the antibiotic resistance patterns within various strains. As part of this research, she has traveled to South Africa, where she has learned more about the realities of tuberculosis and its devastating effects on people. She will be traveling back to South Africa later this year to conduct tuberculosis research there.

Shah plans to be in medical school by fall of 2012 and move toward a specialty in infectious diseases, rural medicine and global health.