Going down a rabbit hole, sending a cold email and talking football add up to back-to-back summers of nuclear medicine research for Integrated Science undergrad

Persistence paid off for undergraduate student Adi Misra who’s spent the past two summers doing nuclear medicine research in Boston and Zürich.

It started with Misra watching a recording of an on-campus talk by Dr. Bharti Khurana, founder and director of the Trauma Imaging Research and Innovation Center at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and an associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School. When the talk ended, Misra stayed online and spent hours surfing the hospital’s website.

“I went deep down the rabbit hole.”

Misra’s interest in nuclear medicine began with a team project during his first year in McMaster’s Integrated Science program. The team studied how radioactive tracers are used to image and diagnose cancers.

Surfing the hospital website was time well spent – it’s how Misra discovered the research being done by Dr. Sharmila Dorbala, Director of Nuclear Cardiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School.

Misra, who was in his second year of undergrad, sent a cold email to Dr. Dorbala asking if her lab was taking on any students for the summer of 2023. She’d already finished hiring students but encouraged Misra to keep in touch.  Many undergrads wouldn’t do this but Misra did and this is where his persistence paid off.

In December, he wrote an application for a summer research project and submitted it to the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. The society funded his project and Misra spent the summer of 2024 in Dr. Dorbala’s amyloidosis research lab. While working in the lab, he met a medical student from Zürich whose supervisor was Dr. Dominik Benz, an amyloidosis investigator and former mentee of Dr. Dorbala who is now a senior attending physician in the Departments of Cardiology and Nuclear Medicine at University Hospital of Zürich.

During his summer in Boston, Misra never made it to Fenway Park for a Red Sox game but kayaked on the Charles River – “my favourite day in Boston” – and had his one and only bowl of New England clam chowder.

Dr. Dorbala encouraged Misra to apply to the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology Future Leaders Program. He was accepted and then invited to the society’s 2024 Scientific Session and Exhibition in Austin, Texas.

One of the guest presenters at the conference was Dr. Benz. Misra introduced himself and highlighted their mutual connections. Their conversation turned to their shared passion for college football. The Texas Longhorns were playing the Michigan Wolverines at the University of Texas at Austin that weekend and Misra and Dr. Benz wound up eating Texas BBQ and watching the game in a restaurant. The Longhorns won 31-12 and Misra scored an invitation to join Dr. Benz’s research group. Misra spent this past summer exploring new ways to quantify the buildup of imaging radiotracers in the heart. Misra explains this will give doctors better tools to understand disease burden in patients with and without cardiac amyloidosis.

While Switzerland was prohibitively expensive, rail passes were cheap and hiking was free. Misra’s best day outside of work was taking the train to explore the mountains, lakes and rivers around Zürich. On his last day, he gave Dr. Benz the perfect thank-you gift – a football to display in his office.

“One thing always led to another,” says Misra about his back-to-back summers as an undergraduate research assistant. “There was a lot of luck along the way.”

Dr. Dorbala says it was more than luck. “Adi has persevered to follow his path, took advantage of the opportunities he received and, given his exceptional talent and social skills, has been very successful.”

Misra knows not every student is comfortable cold emailing faculty or approaching them at conferences or even dropping in during office hours. But he’s found professors will make the time to talk with students who show a genuine interest in their research. “Put yourself out there. Take a leap of faith and start a conversation. It could lead to a one-on-one connection and an amazing opportunity.”

Misra is closing out his final year at Mac with one final research project in another corner of nuclear medicine. His fourth-year thesis is focused on testing a new PET-based teaching tool built around prostate cancer imaging. He says the goal is to see how effective it is in teaching medical trainees to identify and outline problem areas in a radiology and anatomy bootcamp. The project is supervised by Dr. Katherine Zukotynski, a connection Misra made through Dr. Dorbala, once again highlighting the full-circle path of his undergraduate research journey in nuclear medicine.

He’s also in his fourth and final year with the McMaster Science Society (MSS). The society runs events and offers services and resources to more than 8,000 science undergrads in McMaster’s largest Faculty. A student leader since high school, Misra served as a first-year rep with the MSS and then did two terms as vice president of finance. He’s most proud of his work in overhauling the funding model for the undergraduate student societies in the Faculty of Science’s eight departments and schools and creating new scholarships and grants for students. This year, he’s president of the MSS.

“Being involved with the MSS has been one of the most valuable things that I’ve done at Mac. I’ve met so many amazing people.”

As president, he’s focused on making the society’s work even more visible to students. Misra says that means running more booths across campus, putting financial resources like scholarships and grants front and centre and hosting Faculty-wide events that bring science students together outside the classroom.

“At the heart of it, it’s about giving back to the McMaster community that has given me so much. I’m deeply grateful to the Integrated Science program, the MSS and all the professors and mentors who have shaped my journey, and will continue to shape it. I’m excited to keep paying it forward wherever the next chapter takes me.”