Olga Astapova, a third-year M.D./Ph.D. student with the Wayne State University School of Medicine, has been awarded an Individual National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health.

The predoctoral fellowship is a doctoral training grant intended specifically for M.D./Ph.D. combined degree students. It will fund three years of her dissertation research and the third and fourth years of medical school.

Astapova's research centers on the molecular biology of diabetes. Her project is designed to uncover key insulin resistance genes through studying a unique and rare monogenetic form of diabetes, she explained.

Astapova, who is in her first graduate year of training under Todd Leff, Ph.D., associate professor of the Department of Pathology, is originally from Moscow. She moved to Ann Arbor, Mich., at the age of 14, and now lives in Detroit. The 25-year-old completed her undergraduate studies in biochemistry at the University of Michigan.

Astapova said she always wanted to be a physician, but after working part-time in a reproductive endocrinology lab while in college, she "just fell in love with research.

"I considered going to graduate school for awhile, then happened to see a presentation about combined M.D./Ph.D. programs, and decided to go for it."

Astapova selected the School of Medicine's M.D./Ph.D. program because she knew a few medical students here who spoke about the quality of the education and training provided by the faculty.

"I heard a lot of good things about the medical school and success stories about its graduates," she said. Attending WSU also helped her remain close to her mother, her only family member in the country.

With this most recent award, students in the M.D./Ph.D. program have received nine extramural fellowships.