"She was really together and accessible at the same time," says current Experimentors head Jennifer Lin '98. "They really made things smooth for us for our first year."
Gupta's experiences sharing her love of biology were broadened this past academic year, when she served as a course assistant for Biological Sciences 2: "Organismic and Evolutionary Biology."
BS2 course assistants, according to Gupta's fellow course assistant Carrie L. Zinaman '97, who is a Crimson editor, generally serve as something of an undergraduate intermediary between the students and the teaching fellows, who are usually graduate students. Once again, Gupta took her involvement to the next level, devoting herself to the students and being open and available when students needed her help most.
"She would meet with people in her section after-hours, talk to them and answer questions before exams and always go early to lab sessions," Zinaman says. "That was above and beyond the call of duty. It was definitely beyond the job description of a course assistant."
"When her BS2 students were about to have an exam, that was the main thing she would think about," Sohal says. "She would spend days just helping them prepare for the exam or helping them to turn in a lab report."
Her individual accomplishments in biology are no less impressive. She spent four years working in the laboratory of Harvard Medical Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Roberto Kolter, studying the survival mechanisms of bacteria when they suffer starvation.
A graduate student in the lab several years ago determined that the surviving bacteria were mutant strains of bacteria, and that the takeover of the bacteria population by the mutant strains was much faster than expected. The finding changed the way scientists in the lab looked at the rate at which evolution occurred, but more work was left to be done.
"Srishti's work has been important in validating this prior work in the lab," Kolter says. "But she has also found a whole new set of mutant alleles that can take over when the population has no food. She also answered the question of whether such population takeovers were occurring in the real world and not just in the laboratory. They were."
Kolter says he is certain that Gupta will become a scientist of the highest caliber.
"She worked for me at the level of an advanced graduate student in her way of conceiving experiments and controlling those experiments," Kolter says. "Her potential is great. She will be a first-rate scientist."
But what struck Kolter most, as with others with whom Gupta works, is the incredible enthusiasm and genuine curiosity with which she approaches her work.
"Srishti is eager to learn and is enthusiastic," Kolter says. "In the 15 years I have been in the lab, her thesis has been the most fun...undergraduate thesis I've been involved with."
Gupta's friends are quick to agree with this assessment.
"A lot of people work in a lab just for their resume," says Terri Halperin '97, a friend of Gupta. "She was doing her lab work for the sheer purpose of learning."
An advanced standing student, Gupta's thesis work earned her both the A.B. and A.M. degrees.
Next year, she will trade Cambridge, Mass., for Cambridge University in England, where she will continue her work on bacteria in pursuit of an M.Phil. degree. After the year in England, she will return here to attend Harvard Medical School. Ultimately, Gupta says, she may go into academic medicine or work for the Centers for Disease Control or the World Health Organization.
Given the richness of her activities, it's no surprise that Gupta has found the last four years some of the most rewarding of her life.
"It took me two years to figure out how to be happy here and how to grow here," Gupta says. "But the past two years have more than made up for anything I didn't do my first two years here. Harvard is a really great place."
"It takes some time and effort to figure out what you're going to get out of it," she says. "But when you do, it's totally worth it. I wouldn't trade this experience for anything."