NORFOLK, Va. (WAVY) — Old Dominion University senior Olivia Brown is making major waves in the classroom. After countless hours of hard work, her brilliance in biochemistry is attracting national attention.

Brown, 21, is part of ODU’s Lambert Research Group. Her diligence in the lab has opened the door to an incredible opportunity. She is now one of 16 college students in the U.S. selected for a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship by the American Chemical Society Division of Organic Chemistry.

“To get this fellowship is really exciting, and I’m very blessed to get it,” she says. “It’s really opened up a lot of opportunities and I’m excited for what comes with it.”

The biochemistry major is only the second student at ODU to be awarded the prestigious fellowship. The first was back in 2021, according to ODU Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry assistant professor Kyle Lambert.

“Olivia’s been an excellent student,” he said. “She’s been in the lab for two years now. Olivia has really been able to take hold of her project, and she works alongside her fellow graduate students and undergraduate members in the group.”

Brown has also been awarded $6,000 as part of this fellowship sponsored by Pfizer toward her summer’s research.

“My research is working on a new method that’s more affordable and sustainable,” said Brown. “And this method can be used by other chemists to make new medicines. So, for example, we can talk about antibiotics. There’s a problem with antibiotic resistance right now. So, we can take this method, and we can modify antibiotics to become more effective, and try to fix this problem of this resistance.”

Brown has already presented her research to the Virginia Academy of Science in May and the Virginia Drug Discovery Consortium in June. Her research will be part of her senior thesis this upcoming school year.

Brown will meet the other fellowship recipients in September.

We’re all going to Bristol-Myers Squibb in San Diego to present our research as both an oral and poster presentation,” she says. “So we’ll have the opportunity to meet all the other recipients, as well as other industry mentors and I’ll be able to tour the facility of Bristol Myers Squibb, which is really exciting.