UML Student Takes Top Honors at EPA

Dr. George M. Gray of the EPA Office of Research and Development, presents award to Subha Nagarajan.

Green tea makes a potent brew for graduate student Subha Nagarajan, who won a $75,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). With the funding, she will further develop her research into promising anti-cancer compounds that are synthesized from a component of green tea using environmentally benign, green chemistry methods.More than 350 university students, comprising 42 teams, gathered on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., to compete for the EPA’s second annual P3 (People, Prosperity, Planet) Award.

The P3 program encourages the development of sustainable technologies that lead to commercialization. The students showcased their research entries to the public at the National Sustainable Design Expo, set up in a tent on the Mall for two days before the awards ceremony.

The exchange of ideas with other teams was terrific, but the competition was fierce, as just six projects were chosen for awards.

“I was so sure I wouldn’t win, that I told my father not to attend the awards ceremony,” says Nagarajan, whose father was covering the event as a journalist from India. “The judges asked very tough questions, but Dr. Kumar had asked me at least fifty percent of those same questions before! He is everything you could hope for as an advisor.” Physics Prof. Jayant Kumar, director of the Center for Advanced Materials, heads the research project in collaboration with Prof. Susan Braunhut of the Biological Sciences Department.

Research results are promising, as the new compound inhibits cancer cells in lab conditions, while leaving adjoining normal cells unharmed. Anti-cancer drugs are needed: In the U.S. alone, one in four deaths is caused by cancer. In the proposal abstract, Nagarajan writes, “Ironically, most drugs that are used to treat cancer are synthesized using multiple steps that involve the use of carcinogenic chemicals.” If the research is fully successful, “the synthesis of anti-cancer drugs from bio-based materials, using green methods, will cause a paradigm shift in the development of cancer drugs.”

Donna McIntosh, research scientist on the project, writes about the display on the Mall: “We were the odd duck in some ways, as most of the projects were engineering and sustainability models. Many tourists, Congressional aides, EPA staff and other government officials visited. Some schoolchildren with their teachers also came to hear about our work, after visiting the nearby Smithsonian museums. When asked by the teacher if they knew what ‘cancer’ meant, one young boy answered that his mother had cancer and asked Subha if he could take a vial of the catechin home to his mother.  We regretted to say no, but we were encouraged to work all the harder for the future.  I wish this little boy could have seen Subha going on stage to collect her award, and know how much both his question, and the P3 award, inspired her to press on.”

Nagarajan, in emphasizing the collaborative nature of research, gives credit to members of the team and suggestions from other groups. Among them are U. S Army scientists Dr. Lynne Samuelson and Dr. Ferdinando F. Bruno (Dr. Bruno was the first to realize the potential of these compounds as anti-cancer agents); Prof. Braunhut’s group; Dr.Ram Nagarajan (who obtained additional funding) and Sandhya Nagarajan; Chancellor William T. Hogan, for support through the Chancellor’s seed grant; Prof. Kenneth Geiser; Pamela Civie of the Toxics Use Reduction Institute; and Prof. John Warner and his group.