Shah is as at home with the films of Alfred Hitchcock and the music of Philip Glass as he is with the intricacies of nanochemistry and enzyme kinetics. He shatters the stereotype of the researcher as a dreamer with few interests beyond science. In fact, he is a firm believer in being well-read and well-rounded, in order to be a better scientist. “If a scientist cuts himself off from the humanities and the arts, he loses the ability to feel – and that’s dangerous,” notes Shah, making allusions to the downfall of the society in “Brave New World.” Shah is a believer in the Renaissance man philosophy, and according to his advisor at the Honors College, John Gunkel, that’s what Shah is. “He and I will have off-the-cuff conversations about Michel Foucault, the 20th Century French philosopher; 18th Century philosopher G.W.F. Hegel; Nobel-winning writer Herman Hesse – whatever he just happens to have been studying or reading that day,” notes Gunkel, director of the Honors College.

Shah’s love of movies found a home at R-N, where he took several film courses, and the campus’s convenient access to Manhattan complemented his love of art museums. During his time at Rutgers, Shah found time to captain the campus Academic Team through numerous college-bowl type competitions, to tutor third-graders at the 13th Avenue School and high schoolers at St. Benedict’s Prep, as well as serve as president of the Chemistry Club and the Golden Key Honor Society.

Shah started at R-N with 56 college credits accumulated through Advanced Placement classes and special college courses for gifted high school students, allowing him to earn his degree in only three years. He has worked in the research lab of R-N scientist Huixin He, doing nanochemistry research on the neurotransmitter dopamine, all three years. Before college he spent two years in the lab of Dr. David Schuster at New York University. He also had an internship at Texas A & M University last summer, where he worked in biochemistry under Dr. Paul Fitzpatrick.

He will spend this summer interning at the University of Colorado before returning to Dr. He’s lab for another year of research while applying for graduate school. He aims to enter an eight-year MD/PhD so as to combine his loves for research and medicine.

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