In April, Pamela Gehring ’04 joined the elite list of student Fulbright Scholar Award winners at Wittenberg.

As a Fulbright Scholar, Gehring, a double major in biochemistry/molecular biology and German, will study spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a neurodegenerative disorder, at the Institute for Clinical Neurobiology at the University of Würzburg, where neurobiologists have been researching SMA since the mid-1990s.

“SMA is one of the leading causes of infant mortality, often killing affected children by the age of two,” said Gehring, who first became interested in this area while participating in Emory University’s Undergraduate Research Experience program in Georgia while at Wittenberg.

“It’s an incredible opportunity for me and one in which Wittenberg played a phenomenal role in allowing me to work between fields and in tying everything together,” she added.

Gehring, who will begin her research in September, plans to study molecular genetics in graduate school following her time in Germany.