Class of 2023 student Drilon Barnes will be the first Metro graduate to receive the Questbridge Scholarship, a full ride to attend Princeton University. Drilon, who began his Metro journey as a 6th grader, plans to study neuroscience.
During the 2021-2022 school year, Drilon was part of the high school Bodies Biomedical pathway, where he completed a capstone internship at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center Cardiology Laboratory. Dr. Smith, an OSU cardiovascular disease clinician and researcher, and Ethan Schwendeman, the laboratory research associate/manager, mentored Drilon during the internship. For the capstone study, he worked on identifying experimental mice through PCR genotyping and conducted advanced protein immunoblotting assays to detect B2 spectrin levels in hearts after tamoxifen treatment.
Working alongside OSU staff helped Drilon develop professional skills, including the ability to apply his intellectual curiosity in his work. A defining moment of his capstone experience was learning that “success doesn't depend on your skills alone; it also depends on how you apply those skills to what you're working toward.”