Paras Minhas wins Marshall Scholarship

When Paras Minhas spent a summer two years ago teaching health education in Ghana, he encountered an event that would significantly impact his career choice. After watching a woman go into cardiac arrest, he found himself fascinated with a physician’s tireless efforts to help her.

“The physician who was trying to revive her knew that statistically it was not likely she would survive. In fact, a person who goes into cardiac arrest loses brain and bodily functions within four to six minutes. However, the physician did not give up,” he said.

Although the woman didn’t survive the incident, this experience reaffirmed Minhas’ belief that medicine was his calling. And late last month, Minhas, a Pitt senior majoring in chemistry, mathematics and microbiology, was named one of 34 undergraduate students nationwide to receive the Marshall Scholarship.

Minhas, of Baltimore, Maryland, learned in November that he was a recipient of the prestigious award. The scholarship, designed for students to act as ambassadors from the U.S. to the U.K. to strengthen British and American relations, will finance Minhas’ graduate studies in biology at the University College London.

Judith Zang, director of national scholarships at the University of Pittsburgh Honors College, said Minhas’ motivation, discipline and ambition helped him win the scholarship and set him apart from the other contestants.

“You cannot win such an award unless you have [those characteristics] on top of intellectual stamina, curiosity and commitment,” she said.

Zang also highlighted Minhas’ perfectionism as a quality that enabled him to win the award.

“You have no idea how many times he rewrote things because he wasn’t satisfied,” she said.

Minhas has won a number of prestigious awards at Pitt, including the Chancellor’s Undergraduate Research Fellowship, a Brackenridge Spring Research Fellowship and awards as a winning member of Pitt’s debate team. He was also named a Goldwater Scholar and an Amgen Scholar last year.

On campus, Minhas serves as president of two organizations: Longitude Pittsburgh Organization, an agency that raises funds for students in Ghana, and Pitt’s Student Health Advisory Board. He has also authored two peer-reviewed scientific papers.

In London, Minhas will specifically conduct research on the HDAC3 enzyme, an enzyme that plays an integral part in the regulation of DNA transcription. Minhas first worked with the HDAC3 enzyme this past summer as a student researcher at Massachusetts Institute of Technology through an Amgen Scholarship.

The Marshall Scholar plans to examine this enzyme and its relation to mental health, an issue that he has a personal interest in investigating.

While his time in Ghana cemented his career choice, Minhas’ interest in medicine began at a young age. A few members of his family were diagnosed with mental illnesses, and, through observing physicians search for remedies to his family members’ issues, Minhas developed a passion for medicine.

“My family did not know how to handle the situation. I turned to physicians — individuals who see death and illness on a daily basis during this time,” he said. “Physicians are rarely individuals who run away from complicated problems.”

For Minhas, receiving the Marshall Scholarship adds a final bit of positive reinforcement to an accomplished undergraduate career, a large part of which he attributes to professors and administrators at his undergraduate college.

Minhas said Pitt offers undergraduate students many research opportunities.

He initially became involved with these opportunities through the First Experiences in Research program and by serving as a research assistant at the Pittsburgh Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease at UPMC.

“From there, I continued to branch out, using skills and knowledge that I gained in one laboratory to solve scientific questions in other laboratories,” Minhas said.

Minhas said his professors never failed to challenge him.

“They like to test the boundaries of what we students can and cannot handle, which is something that I have a lot of respect for, because in the real world, no one will be there to hold your hand,” he said.

Li-Huei Tsai, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Minhas had the ability to work independently during his time at her laboratory.

“Having had the pleasure of working alongside Paras, I can confidently place him as one of the best undergraduate researchers to have worked in my laboratory,” she said.

Clearly, winning the Marshall Scholarship is a steep cliff to climb for any student. But Pitt’s latest recipient of the award said undergraduate students should never let the odds discourage them.

“The statistical odds of receiving any type of award are very low, but who cares? Don’t pay attention to the statistics, pay more attention to what you need to do to achieve your goals,” he said.