Misty Richards, a UCLA alumna who graduated in 2003, was awarded the Fulbright scholarship in March and will use the award to study in Japan in the fall.
The Fulbright scholarship is a prestigious grant awarded to about 1,500 out of several thousand U.S. student applicants in order to study abroad, said Fang Hu, a Fulbright program adviser for the UCLA graduate division.
“I freaked out. It was one of the happiest moments in my life,” Richards said. “I definitely had my sights on it since I was 18.”
Richards said she had been intimidated by the scholarship’s prestige because she thought she was under-qualified when applying.
Richards, currently a fourth-year student in Albany Medical College in New York, will continue her graduate studies in the National Center of Neurology and Psychology in Tokyo starting this fall.
Selected recipients of Fulbright scholarships demonstrate leadership potential in their fields and academic achievement. The application’s components included a research proposal, a personal statement, three letters of recommendation and a foreign language report, Hu said.
When Richards was reminded of the foreign language report in the application, she giggled.
“I did the test, and you just have to be conversational, so I passed that … (but) my Japanese is horrible, so I really have to brush up,” Richards said. Her interest with the language was nourished by her conversations with her Japanese grandmother.
Richards said the proposal was the most difficult portion of the application.
“It has to be very precise. … It was two pages and I can write 15 pages much more easily than I can with two. Every word counts,” Richards said.
To complete her graduate studies in Japan, Richards is pursuing a two-pronged research project.
The first part is to investigate the treatment and stigma associated with schizophrenia in America and Japan, and the second is to identify and begin characterizing a gene of interest in schizophrenia.
“(My research) is a fusion of so many different things. It’s biology, it’s philosophy, it’s psychology,” she said.
Richards graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychobiology and minored in applied developmental psychology. She was the senior of the year in the psychobiology department.
Her numerous extracurricular activities included founding the Undergraduate Psychology Journal at UCLA, co-founding Health Outreach and Pre-Medical Experience and neuropsychiatric research at UCLA.
Richards also conducted research at the California Institute of Technology and the National Institutes of Health. After graduating from UCLA and before attending Albany Medical College, she worked at Columbia University.
In addition to research, Richards said she also enjoys helping under-served communities.
Richards is a very committed and compassionate humanitarian, said Pam Viele, executive director of Student Development of UCLA Student Affairs. Viele was Richard’s mentor during Richard’s involvement in Student Health Advocates.
Two years ago, Richards helped open a clinic in Ddegeya Village in Uganda called the Engeye Clinic.
In spring 2007, she helped to provide the first modern health care the village had ever received.
“We are trying to raise money for Engeye. … We do whatever we can to raise money,” she said, happily pointing to her toes painted red with white crosses that were specially painted for the San Francisco Marathon fundraising event.
Team Engeye ran the San Francisco Marathon on Sunday, raising money for every mile ran in the marathon, the half marathon and the 5K, she said.
Richards said her involvement with the clinic takes up a significant amount of her time, approximately four to five hours a day.
She said she loves to serve the village and would like to recruit more volunteers.
“She is the most unmaterialistic person I ever met. She is not in for the money. She just wants to contribute,” said her mother Dawna Lee Heising. “We don’t push her in anything. She pushes herself.”
Richards’ friends and family say that she is not only outstanding in research and service, but she is also a very exceptional student.
“I mean, she has always been that busy. Even before she could drive, she joined every organization in the world,” Heising said
Richards can amazingly tackle many activities at once and still be in good standing, said Linda Crane Bonin, assistant graduate director at the Center for Neuropharmacology and Neuroscience.
After graduating, Richards spent two years researching , before deciding to attend Albany Medical College and pursue its seven to eight-year M.D./Ph.D program.
During Richards’s first year of medical school, she took an exam that was regularly administered after the second year and received the highest score at Albany Medical College in 25 years, Bonin said.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like to have a brain like hers,” she said.
Richards said she looks forward to researching in the Center for Neurology and Psychiatry and learning more Japanese.
“Misty is Chinese, Japanese, German, Irish and English,” Heising said. “I am really happy that she is going to Japan because she will learn more about her culture.”
“We are going to be visiting her in Japan, and we are going to bring my mom because she is Japanese. I am proud that she is going to do the Ph.D/M.D., though it’s going to take longer,” she added.
After completing Albany Medical College’s M.D./Ph.D program, Richards said she wants to become a psychiatrist or a neurologist working with children.
In psychiatry, you get to work with kids at a vulnerable time, so you are almost able to save them early on; while in neurology, there is a shortage of neurologists, she said.
Shooting for ambitious childhood dreams is excellent advice for current UCLA undergraduates, she said.
“Always, always, believe in yourself, and remember what you want to be,” Richards said.