Student Profiles

Lawrence first appreciated the noxious synergy between poverty and pathogens in a class on public health at Haverford College, which kindled his aspiration to become a physician and address health inequalities. Lawrence completed his undergraduate research thesis in the lab of Dr. Iruka Okeke at Haverford, studying virulence factors and antimicrobial peptides produced by diarrheagenic E. coli. He also helped develop diagnostic assays to detect drug resistance mutations in Hepatitis C virus with Dr. Adele McCormick during a semester abroad at University College London. After college, Lawrence completed a post-baccalaureate fellowship in the lab of Dr. Mark Connors at the National Institutes of Health, where he studied the cytotoxic T cell response to HIV infection in vaccine recipients and in rare patients whose immune systems can control HIV. Lawrence continued his research efforts as a medical student at UC San Diego, where he studied malaria genetics in the lab of Dr. Elizabeth Winzeler and the spatial epidemiology of antimalarial drug distribution in Uganda with Dr. Ross Boyce. Lawrence’s mentors and role models have inspired him to further refine his aspirations to becoming a physician-scientist who develops vaccines for infectious diseases. As an OxCam scholar, Lawrence plans to work on malaria vaccine development under the tutelage of Dr. Robert Seder at the NIH Vaccine Research Center and Dr. Simon Draper at Oxford’s Jenner Institute.