A Year in the Fulbright Life showcases selected Fulbright MENA participants’ program year, month by month, in the United States.
October 2024
In October, I attended a Halloween event at the University of Mississippi Medical Center with a Pakistani friend I met at the international coffee hour. We also visited the Museum of Natural Sciences in our host community of Jackson, Mississippi. I made friends from the United States, Vietnam, and China when I went to an international class, an English and culture class offered by a local church. It was a busy month but a very enjoyable and insightful one as well.
November 2024
November was full of delicious food experiences! I participated in my international class’s Thanksgiving dinner, where we enjoyed traditional American Thanksgiving food and food brought by international students to represent their cultures. I personally shared an original Egyptian potato dish for the occasion. Later in the month, I enjoyed a holiday work lunch with colleagues from the Department of Physiology and Biophysics.
December 2024
December was full of Christmas activities. I visited the Governor’s Mansion which was heavily decorated for the holiday. They even made a replica of the mansion out of gingerbread cookies! The international class arranged for another holiday-themed dinner where I shared an Egyptian dish of stir-fried livers. Afterwards, we went to see the Singing Christmas Tree. In a month full of good food, I was also invited to dine with some U.S. families; we gathered in one family’s house to enjoy a brisket barbeque and I brought potato salad and hummus as side dishes. Finally, I enjoyed attending a Christmas concert at a local church.
As for my research, innovative technology was a crucial part. I had been researching the effect of high milk sugar consumption on male and female mice brain and heart rate of aging and the role of hemeoxygenase-1 (HO-1) enzyme to protect against aging. I have been using a wide range of technologies for the work, from an echo-MRI machine that can measure tissue composition (fat-lean-water), to western blot and SDS gels that we use to measure protein concentration inside the tissue, to the various software programs that I used to analyze the data such as Odyssey by Li-Cor, Noldus, graph prism, SPSS, and many more. Without this technology, some aspects of my research would not have been possible, and other aspects would have taken 10 times as long to complete. I am thankful for the great minds that made these technologies possible and for the funding that made them accessible. I am also thankful for the Fulbright Program that played a part in both shaping some of those minds and providing funding opportunities.
February 2025
Going to the Fulbright Reentry Workshop in Washington, DC was like a breath of fresh air to me. I enjoyed reconnecting with my friends from Egypt and making new ones, seeing snow for the first time in my life, and exploring a new city! My friend, Nehad, and I woke up early each day and went for a walk around the city, visiting some of the historic places before the workshop schedule started. We had a blast and took one million pictures!
March 2025
I was invited to take part in filming a video of influential women scientists on campus. At the day of the celebration, I got to meet a couple of highly influential women at the university. The office also acknowledged the women scientists who participated in that video by awarding them with a certificate, and I won a beautiful vase of flowers as well. I loved having the certificate and flowers on my desk.
April 2025
Finally, the time came to attend the American Physiological Society Summit 2025 in Baltimore, Maryland. This event is one of the largest international physiology conferences in the world, and I have wanted to attend it since writing about it in my Fulbright application! So, I was really thrilled to be at this summit and to co-author two poster presentations. Since I was in a new city, I could not help but spare some time to explore. I went for a stroll in the Inner Harbor area, saw some cool old ships, and explored the Little Italy neighborhood.
May 2025
May was a super exhausting time for me with the end date of my Program rapidly approaching as I spent long hours in the lab to finish my project. Thankfully, some friends from church invited me to attend an outing at Twin Lakes, where we indulged in God’s magnificent creation around us, and I tried canoeing for the first time.
June 2025
Wrapping up my project, my supervisor encouraged me to present a summary at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics’ weekly physiology seminar. It was a big challenge and achievement to present in front of very well-established scientists, one of whom was Professor Hall, whose textbook I have studied for the past eight years. Of course, I had to get his autograph.
As for my research, I used equipment and software to show that female mice brains were sensitive to high galactose (milk sugar) and showed accelerated aging and HO-1 inhibition protected against it, while male mice hearts were more sensitive to high galactose (milk sugar) and showed accelerated aging and HO-1 induction protected against it. I am currently preparing manuscripts with these findings for publication.
With one week left before I returned to Egypt, I had just enough time for a quick trip to New Orleans. I was able to say goodbye to my American and international friends and lab colleagues, and gift them Egyptian souvenirs and Egyptian petit fours cookies.
Sally is a 2024 Fulbright Foreign Student Alumna from Egypt. She was in a Joint Supervision program and conducted doctoral research on physiology and biophysics at the University of Mississippi Medical Center.