Isaac Kresse is a senior at the Northeastern University. He is an extremely talented student who at the age of six, started investigating the existential questions that would put him on the path to dedicating his life to understanding age-related diseases such as Huntington’s, Alzheimer’s, and Parkinson’s. His passion for science and chemistry, continued growing well through middle and high school. The more he understood chemical processes, the more fascinated he became with the very idea of life. He would often ask questions like: How does a mass of molecules become a breathing, thinking, human being? How do all the molecular systems work together, and what happens on the molecular level to make us sick and die?
John Engen, distinguished Professor of Bioanalytical Chemistry at the Northeastern University predicts, “Kresse will become a great scientist one day”. Engen wrote a letter endorsing Kresse for a Fulbright Scholarship stating that Kresse thinks and asks questions more like a graduate student than an undergraduate student. He is curious about science to the point that it can sometimes be a struggle for Engen to find enough materials to keep him occupied. After hearing about a topic for a brief time, he would already formulate sophisticated questions which would demonstrate that Kresse is really thinking and analysing everything.
Kresse will use his scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Germany where he will study the role of chaperone proteins in age-related diseases. According to him, in Germany, there will soon be fewer people under 30 years old than there are people over 60.
“In my research, I hope to study mechanisms of disease to help in the development of treatments,” he said.
Shahjadi Jemim Rahman