In the first three weeks of her freshman year, Nicole Ali, a 17-year-old from St. Paul, Minn., has joined a kung fu club, led Pennypacker’s ultimate frisbee team to victory and discovered that “Nietzsche makes no sense whatsoever.”

But in a few months, Ali will resume her work on stem cell research, which recently won her a $50,000 Davidson Fellowship that goes towards her college tuition.

The daughter of two chemists, Ali grew up surrounded by discussions of science. When she won a Minnesota Academy of Science research grant after sophomore year of high school, Ali decided to spend her summer working with stem cell researcher Catherine Verfaillie at the University of Minnesota.  

Ali soon became a full-time employee at the lab, allowing her to pursue work on her own personal project.

“Basically,” explained Ali, “I work with umbilical cord cells, and using proteins which we know are antagonistic, we block their growth at a point where the cells can be used for other purposes.” Ali said that eventually, these cells could be used to help leukemia patients, who are otherwise dependent on bone-marrow transplants.

And the national debate over the morality of stem cell research—even though Ali works with umbilical cords, not embryos—has put her in the spotlight.

On a recent trip to Washington D.C. with other Davidson fellows to meet with senators interested in educational reform, Ali faced a media onslaught. “The first thing they all wanted to do was pose for photo ops,” she said with a laugh.  

“Stem cell research is a controversial field right now, and I think that’s why I’ve gotten so much attention,” said Ali. “Using the umbilical cord cells fixes the lack of donors and graft recipient problems often associated with bone marrow transplants.  This is really the Holy Grail of stem cell research, and could help overcome some of the field’s biggest roadblocks.”

Later this school year, Ali will continue her research at Harvard’s new Stem Cell Institute.  She will work under the guidance of Associate Professor of Medicine and the Institute’s co-director David Scadden, who is out of the country and could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Three other freshman girls, Shuyu Wang, Athena Adamopoulos, and Ann Chi, also won Davidson fellowships of $50,000, $25,000, and $10,000 respectively; Wang and Chi in the field of science, and Adampoloulos for musical composition.

Chi, who won an award for her work on metal catalysts used in industrial fields to form organic products such as plastics, worked at the University of Indiana for her research.

“It was really neat to read the bios [of the Davidson fellows] and see how many people would be in the neighborhood when I got to school. Harvard was really represented,” Chi said.

The four fellowship winners have stayed in touch at Harvard—Ali and Adamopolous are currently working together on the score of an independent film, while Chi and Wang are in the same physics class.