Summer research opportunity gives mature student experience needed to pursue medical school dreams

Jason Pounall jokes that “old people” shouldn’t go back to school.  

“These young adults in my classes, they’re quick. They keep me on my toes,” he says through laughter. “Experiencing school now with what’s available, the access to information and the technology, is so different from when I studied.” 

Pounall came to Calgary from Jamaica in 2017 equipped with an engineering degree but soon realized it wasn’t the career path for him. He was interested in pursuing a career in medicine and applied to the Cumming School of Medicine. After being told his engineering degree was too old to meet the requirements for medical school, he decided to go back to school as a mature student to work on getting the requirements needed to chase his dreams. 

Chance conversation leads to perfect opportunity 

He’s currently in his second year of courses in the Natural Sciences program in the Faculty of Science. After his first year, he was looking for ways to bolster his application for medical school. A chance conversation with a professor, Dr. Gordon Chua, PhD, about DNA transcription and translation, quickly translated into the perfect opportunity.  

“Dr. Chua encouraged me to try to get hands-on wet lab experience, as it would be a huge boost to my med school application,” explains Pounall. “He connected me with Dr. Marcus Samuel, PhD and pointed me toward the Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs), and I applied two days before the deadline.”  

Pounall spent this past summer in the lab with funding from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), working closely with Samuel and Chua and their graduate students on their collaborative project on gene-editing in chickpea to improve nutritional value, using CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology.’ 

Increasing the protein content of chickpeas can help address the global food shortage crisis, while increased branching would result in more leaves per plant, thus assisting in the fight against climate change. Doing this using CRISPR technology prevents chickpea plants from being considered genetically modified organisms (GMOs).  

“Jason was a great addition to the research group to create new herbicide-tolerant and nutritionally improved chickpea varieties for Canada,” says Samuel. “He was actively engaged in learning and helping with the tissue culture and gene editing process that we are establishing for a crop like chickpea, that would be important for Albertan and Canadian economies.” 

Experience will help set him apart on medical school applications 

While he jokes around that “old people” shouldn’t go back to school (for the record, he’s only 38), Pounall recognizes the impact his USRA experience had on his studies and will have on his plans. 

“Experience matters,” he says. “Not many people finishing their undergrad get to work in their field of study, and I know this opportunity will help me stand out in a crowded field of med school applicants. I encourage everyone to seek experiences that will help them succeed.”