“I’m not one that is easily deterred,” Anneke Tucker says with a disarming smile. It’s a good thing. The 23-year-old Oregon State University senior from Lakeview, Oregon, has fixed her sights on nothing less than improving health care in rural communities. And along the way, she might throw in a new treatment for one of the nation’s most serious health threats, Type 2 diabetes.
Last winter, judges in a national competition, The Journal of Young Investigators’ Second Annual Virtual Poster Session, recognized her sklls and ambition when they awarded her first place for a video presentation on research with scientists in OSU’s Linus Pauling Institute (LPI). It was Tucker’s second presentation to a scientific audience.
The University Honors College student grew up in a ranching community and, inspired by her participation in Future Farmers of America, came to Oregon State University to study animal science. But instead of healthy cows, it was healthy people that drew her attention, so she switched her focus in the College of Agricultural Sciences to BioResource Research. Intent on getting into a lab to satisfy the required 400 to 600 hours of laboratory experience, she searched for a mentor and applied for undergraduate research funding from OSU’s Howard Hughes Medical Institute program and from the OSU Office of Research...
