University of Pennsylvania senior Max Wragan has been selected as one of 12 in the nation to receive a George J. Mitchell Scholarship for graduate studies in Ireland. The Mitchell Scholarship is one of the country’s most prestigious scholarship programs.
Sponsored by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, the scholarship covers tuition and accommodations, as well as stipends for living expenses and travel, for one academic year of postgraduate study in any discipline offered by institutions of higher learning in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Maxine Wragan, a resident of Great Falls, is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania. After studying Neuroscience for two years at Pomona College, she transferred to UPenn to join the Eisch Lab at Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. As a Goldwater Scholar, Wragan researched the developmental time course of microglia in the hippocampus. More specifically, she studied explored sex-based differences in microglial density or morphology. She will be the second author on a publication currently being prepared about this research, and she is the co-author of two other publications.
With the scholarship she plans to pursue a master’s degree in neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin to study the impact of inflammation on chronic pain. She eventually plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in neuroscience to further expand her neuroscience research.
For her research Wragan has been awarded the 2021 Goldwater Scholarship, the Pincus-Magaziner Family Undergraduate Research and Travel Fund, and the Ruth Marcus Kanter College Alumni Society Research Grant.
She has been a research assistant since May 2020 at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also has conducted research through summer internships at George Washington University Hospital, Pomona College, and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Wragan is president and founder of the student-led Satellite Learning Program, a virtual service that provides free one-on-one tutoring to K-12 students, for which she received the Student Creativity Grant from The Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity. She founded a branch of this program at Penn that tutors homeless youth in Philadelphia. Wragan also tutors biology and chemistry at Penn and volunteers at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital’s spinal rehabilitation clinic.
The Mitchell Scholarship, named in honor of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, is designed to introduce and connect future American leaders to Ireland while recognizing and fostering intellectual achievement, leadership, and a commitment to community and public service.
Source: Press announcement from Mitchell Scholarship