Penn alumnus named 2024 Samvid Scholar

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Arnav Lal, who graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2023, has been chosen for the fourth cohort of Samvid Scholars. Lal was selected from a pool of over 1000 applicants for his academic and leadership achievements and demonstrated drive to make positive changes in society.  Samvid Scholars is a merit-based graduate scholarship and leadership program for changemakers. Samvid Scholars was established in 2021 by Samvid Ventures to invest in the graduate education of future leaders who are committed to effecting positive change in society. Scholars receive up to $100,000 in graduate school funding along with leadership development programming and a network of peers and mentors.

Arnav Lal is an MD candidate at Harvard Medical School, where he plans to study infectious disease through genomics and computational biology. He graduated summa cum laude, majoring in biophysics, biology, and philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, he was a University Scholar, a College Dean’s Scholar, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and received the Roy and Diana Vagelos Science Challenge Award. He attended the University of Cambridge as a Churchill Scholar, where he conducted research at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute for the master’s program in Biological Sciences.

Arnav has developed multiple algorithms for sorting, visualizing, and analyzing microbial genomes both during his undergraduate research at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and more recently at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He recently helped lead the creation and implementation of a portable microbial sequencing project in the Galápagos islands that surveyed microbial evolution and antimicrobial resistance in a port town within the archipelago. He has a broad range of teaching experience, serving as a teaching assistant for seven courses across biology, physics, and philosophy, and a philosophy mentor at Philadelphia high schools.

Following graduate training, Arnav aspires to develop microbial genomic approaches that are implemented at a patient or population level, using computational approaches to predict bacterial characteristics such as antibiotic resistance to generate more targeted and accurate healthcare responses.

Arnav grew up in Greer, SC. He spends his free time playing sports including soccer, ultimate frisbee, and taekwondo. He is developing an increasing interest in nature photography.

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