Jason Pounall jokes that “old people” shouldn’t go back to school.

“These young adults in my classes, they’re quick. They keep me on my toes,” he says through laughter. “Experiencing school now with what’s available, the access to information and the technology, is so different from when I studied.” 

In 2017, Pounall came to Calgary from Jamaica. He was equipped with an engineering degree but soon realized it wasn’t the career path for him. Realizing he had an interest in medicine, he applied to the Cumming School of Medicine (at the University of Calgary). After being told his engineering degree was too old to meet the entry requirements for medical school, he decided to go back to school as a mature student to work on meeting the educational requirements to chase his dreams. 

He’s currently in his second year of courses in the Natural Sciences program in the University of Calgary’s Faculty of Science. After his first year, he started looking for ways to bolster his application for medical school. A chance conversation with a professor, Dr. Gordon Chua, about DNA transcription and translation quickly turned into the perfect opportunity.

“Dr. Chua encouraged me to try to get hands-on wet lab experience, as it would be a huge boost to my med school application,” explains Pounall. “He connected me with Dr. Marcus Samuel and pointed me toward the Undergraduate Student Research Awards (USRAs), and I applied two days before the deadline.”

With funding from NSERC, Pounall spent this past summer in the lab, working closely with Drs. Samuel and Chua and their graduate students on their collaborative project. The team is working on gene editing for chickpeas, with the aim to improve their nutritional value. They’re using CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology, which allows researchers to target particular parts of the chickpea DNA sequence for editing. 

One of the team’s research goals is to increase the protein content of chickpeas, which would help address the global food shortage crisis. In addition, they hope to encourage increased branching, which would result in more leaves per plant, and this would assist in the fight against climate change. Working on all of this using CRISPR technology prevents chickpea plants from being considered genetically modified organisms because the process doesn’t add DNA from external sources to the chickpeas.

“Jason was a great addition to the research group to create new herbicide-tolerant and nutritionally improved chickpea varieties for Canada,” says Dr. Samuel. “He was actively engaged in learning and helping with the tissue culture and gene-editing process that we are establishing for a crop like chickpea, [which] would be important for Albertan and Canadian economies.” 

While Pounall jokes that “old people” shouldn’t go back to school (for the record, he’s only 38), he recognizes the impact of his USRA experience on his studies and the influence it will have on his broader plans. 

“Experience matters,” he says. “Not many people finishing their undergrad get to work in their field of study, and I know this opportunity will help me stand out in a crowded field of med school applicants. I encourage everyone to seek experiences that will help them succeed.” 

This article was adapted and republished with permission from the University of Calgary.