Earlier this year, Priyanshu Alluri played a bit of Russian roulette with his future. He applied for both the Marshall and Churchill Scholarships, knowing that he would prefer the Churchill. He got the Marshall, a two-year program, and turned it down, before hearing he'd gotten the Churchill. And he got it. "The Churchill is a one-year program, and it's a tighter cohort," he explains. "And I'm a people person." Phew.
We catch up with him in Memphis, where he is visiting his family, taking long walks, playing board games, and catching up with friends. Growing up, the Biology major (modified with Computer Science), saw his parents, both computer scientists and engineers, working with code. "Every day, more code," he laughs. Coming to Dartmouth, he was determined NOT to study Computer Science. But after taking CS1, he could see the real value of computer science for research.
Priyanshu takes a long view of research: he loves the way it builds on the ideas of other scientists, especially in his field—immunology—where new discoveries are happening every day, changing lives. "Everything you do has potential significance and can push the field forward," he says. "There may not be new lands to discover, but there's a lot of room for discovery when it comes to B-cells (white blood cells that help defend the body against disease, including cancer) and immune responses," he laughs. On internships, working with patients at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, showed him the critical potential for this research to help predict disease.
Priyanshu will be working in a small lab in Churchill College in Cambridge, England. He expects to have a lot of autonomy, and he expects to continue dancing. As captain of Street Soul dance team at Dartmouth, Priyanshu has come to rely on dance as an "outlet."
A Presidential and Stamps Scholar, Class of '74 Health Equity Scholar, and Goldwater Scholarship recipient, Priyanshu is no stranger to hard work and successful applications. His parents are used to his humility—they were "super excited" when he got the news, if a little concerned about the one-year gap before medical school. "I'll do better research in the future!" he convinced them.
Among many mentors, Priyanshu is grateful to Computer Science Professor Soroush Visoughi. "I received incredible support from him, and he taught me a lot about deep learning," Priyanshu says. "He's the first person who taught me you can have a mentor who is also a friend."
