In lab with renowned researcher, junior finds personal encounter with knowledge
Sometime in the future, if you're eating your way through a bacon cheeseburger and a super-size order of French fries, you may have Ami Chitalia, '06, to thank for keeping your arteries unblocked. Chitalia, a pre-med junior from Nashua, N.H., is helping Brandeis biology professor K.C. Hayes develop healthier oils to use when cooking food.
Chitalia worked throughout spring semester with Hayes, testing how cooking oils behave when heated and how long they stand up before degrading into products that are biologically dangerous when ingested. Chitalia compared fat generated from various cooking oils, including a new blend made from oil and animal fat that Hayes is comparing to "Appetize," a healthier frying fat from his lab. The lab also is looking at another modified vegetable oil used by many fast food chains.
Working with Hayes, Chitalia gets the personal encounter with knowledge that many Brandeis undergraduates experience through working directly with faculty members in departments across campus.
Although fast-food chains often re-assure their customers that they fry in vegetable oil as opposed to an animal-derived product, this doesn't necessarily mean their menus are healthier, because the vegetable oil often contains unhealthy trans fatty acids or heat-breakdown products. "In fact, the test vegetable oil had the worst fat breakdown by far," Chitalia says.
The research experience has been overwhelmingly positive for Chitalia. She describes Hayes as "very friendly, very excited about his work, so he gets you excited about it too." Hayes was also careful to explain the intricacies of his science to his students. After each day in the lab, he took the time to review the day's accomplishments and plan for the next day's. Chitalia believes the laboratory experience taught her "a lot about research in general." At Brandeis, she is a health: science, society, and policy major because that combination gives her the context of how health care fits into American society at large.
Both Chitalia's parents came from Bombay, though she is American-born. She and her family are Jains, devotees of an Indian religion, which shares some affinities with Hinduism. "Some of our principles are similar to Hinduism, but we have different deities. We have 24 that we worship. Our main principle is non-violence." Like most Jains, Chitalia is a vegetarian.
She often feels the pull of India, which she has visited twice. At Brandeis, she connects with her heritage through involvement with the 60-member-strong South Asia Organization, which she sees as an example of the University's rich diversity (another is her immediate circle: one of her best friends is from Trinidad, another is from Cyprus). Chitalia helped choreograph one of the South Asia Organization's dances for the big Mela festival on campus. Besides helping coordinate Mela, she is also a member of the Brandeis Emergency Medical Core (BEMCO), the student-run medical response team.
For fun, Chitalia hits Boston's dance clubs, near Fenway Park. Closer to campus, she enjoys the creative east/west "Asian fusion" restaurants on Waltham's Moody Street.