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Irene C. Blat
As a teenager in Charlotte, North Carolina, Irene Blat helped her family resettle a group of Cuban refugees who had been granted political asylum in the United States. She witnessed the difficulty that immigrants had obtaining adequate medical care. This inspired Blat, whose family is from Venezuela and who speaks fluent Spanish, to become a volunteer translator at free medical clinics in Charlotte. "There's a real need for Spanish speakers at these medical clinics to translate basic health information for Hispanic immigrants," she explained.
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Irene C. Blat
Duke University
Durham, NC
Photo: Kathleen Dooher
A high-resolution photograph is available on request.
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As part of her clinic work, Blat and other volunteers in Charlotte went door-to-door to educate members of the Latino community about health and disease. As an undergraduate biology major at Duke University, Blat continued volunteering to translate health information for the Hispanic community in Raleigh-Durham. Those experiences motivated her to combine her interest in public health with her fascination with basic science.
During the summer of 2004, she participated in HHMI's Exceptional Research Opportunities Program (EXROP), which offers research experiences for disadvantaged and minority undergraduates. She spent the summer in the biochemistry lab of Tania Baker, an HHMI investigator at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Blat studied MuB, a protein that regulates how a virus that infects cells, using a strategy similar to the HIV virus, interacts with the host cell DNA. She designed several mutants of MuB in which a specific amino acid was altered, in an attempt to understand the molecular interactions of the protein. "Even obstacles to the research were thought-provoking," Blat said of her experience.
Baker was impressed that Blat took on this challenging biochemistry research project before she had even studied biochemistry. "She did beautifully, teaching herself biochemistry while carrying out her experiments," said Baker. "She clearly has what it takes to be a successful researcher."
After earning a bachelor of science in biology with a concentration in pharmacology, Blat became a research technician at Boston's Broad Institute where she worked on the Connectivity Map—a project overseen by HHMI investigator Todd Golub that uses gene expression patterns to make connections between drugs, genes, and diseases. Blat was an author on a paper about the project published in the journal Science on September 29, 2006. With her Gilliam fellowship, she plans to attend graduate school but has not yet decided on a program.
Although she wants to become an academic researcher, Blat has not lost the social conscience that first drove her to volunteer at the clinic in Charlotte. "It's important for researchers to be involved with what's going on in the community," she said.
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