Overall Winner
Anup Patel
University of Florida
Senior in Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics/Economics/Political Science
4.0 GPA

About 6,000 students enter as freshmen every year at the University of Florida. Some are unsure of anything—what to major in, where to live, whether or not to go Greek, how to register for classes. Others come with a clear goal and begin working toward it as quickly as possible. And occasionally, one comes along who announces his intentions and follows through on them from day one.

“I remember meeting Anup four years ago on the back steps of Tigert Hall his freshman year, and he said to me, ‘I’m going to be doing research in one of the faculty’s labs,’ and I thought to myself, ‘This guy’s just a freshman,’” says Sheila Dickison, associate provost and director of the honors program. She says she was surprised when just weeks later, Patel stopped by her office to let her know he was successful in his quest…and how. “He was working for Dr. Ken Berns, who was then the dean of the college of medicine. That told me right then that, for a freshman, to have the initiative to seek out Dr. Berns, get on with his lab, and begin to do research is pretty incredible.”

“Anup came to see me before he’d even started in school here,” says Dr. Berns, now the director of the UF Genetics Institute. He was willing to bring the freshman into his research lab—“he was obviously very bright and had some research experience”—but only on one condition. “We had an agreement that as long as he maintained a perfect grade point average, he could stay on with me, since I was concerned that he be able to concentrate on his studies—which, of course, he did,” Berns says.

Patel’s resume for the first few years at UF looks impressive, showing the involvement you’d expect to find from a Type-A, med-school-bound overachiever. He got on board at the local Ronald McDonald House, putting in hours supporting ailing children and their families, doing everything from manning the front desk to helping clean their rooms. He worked in the molecular biology and genetics department lab, pushing forward on projects to reduce diabetic retinopathy and age-related macular degeneration.  He brought 30 hours of advanced-placement credits to give him a running start and then moved on to maintaining a perfect 4.0 in his demanding major of biochemistry and molecular genetics.

And then he got busy.

In his work in the lab, Patel, 22, saw progress being made but speed bumps slowing the pace. “Over the last three years, I’ve helped develop a novel therapy for diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in working-age people,” Patel says. “From this project, I witnessed how medical research can ameliorate the suffering caused by virulent diseases but recognized that the exorbitant cost of some drugs limits their availability to only a handful of individuals.” His desire to have a greater understanding of both the business and the political sides of health care led him into UF’s Student Government, where he served as cabinet director for health. It led him to end up with three majors. And it led him to the U.S. Senate and India.

“Student Government is a really good way to train yourself to be a politically active physician,” he says. His election coincided with his success in bringing the Locks of Love program to campus. The “hair drive,” which provides wigs for cancer patients, not only provided more than enough materials for 50 wigs but created momentum—Locks of Love coordinators have requested Patel to stage another drive.  As a cabinet director with administrative chores such as allocating SG funds for health events, organizing events like a STD Awareness Day, and serving on the Student Health Advisory Board, Patel found that some basic awareness issues needed to be tended to on campus. “One thing we pushed for was just an awareness about better sanitation,” he says. “You can’t believe how many people don’t wash their hands!” He started building skills in SG that he knew he’d need later. “These campus involvements have taught me a great deal about grassroots fund raising and public relations work while strengthening my determination to make a difference on an even larger scale in the health field.”

His work needed a larger arena than SG, however, and Patel spent a summer interning with Sen. Bob Graham and learning about prescription drug legislation. The internship was supposed to last four weeks, but at the end of the month, Patel had made himself too indispensable to part with. Rather than having a deep acquaintance with the copy machine and the coffee maker, Patel’s internship resulted in work that went to the Senate floor in Graham’s own hands.

“He was fortunate to arrive at a time when we had tremendous demand in regards to the amount of work we had to do, and he luckily arrived literally as the prescription drug debate was heating up,” says Dr. Howard Forman, associate professor of diagnostic radiology at Yale University and then legislative fellow in Graham’s office. “Anup brought his research skills to the table, capable and willing to work long hours and do the type of detailed analysis that was needed at that point.” So, when it was time for the four-week switch to another congressional office, Forman asked if Patel would stay on. “He stayed for what was essentially two internships in the office, although clearly the second part of the internship he was like a staffer and if anything like a mentor to other interns,” Forman says. “You realize he was a sophomore, a rising junior at the time, and there were people who were juniors and seniors coming in and he was really like a senior hand.” But Forman gives little credence to circumstance paving the way for Patel. “Some people would say that he was just lucky to have arrived at that time and that office, and he found a combination of people that were willing to mentor him,” he says. “But in reverse, I’ve worked with a lot of students, trainees, and physicians in my time, and only a few of them really take advantage of the opportunity to be mentored and to become successful. I think he was the classic example of someone like that.”

Patel’s spreadsheets and research got incorporated into the senator’s floor speech presenting the Graham-Miller-Zell prescription drug plan, but Patel got to go on the ultimate Washington field trip as well. “I got to witness the Senate floor firsthand,” he says. “He gave me the privilege of the floor, which is about as big an honor as there is. I got to go on the floor and show my research—it was on C-Span and stuff.”

As Patel’s involvement increased, so did his academic commitments. Not many people end up with three majors, but he makes it sound very sensible. “When I went to work with Sen. Graham, that’s where the poli-sci came in,” he says of adding the second major. Dr. Forman’s influence on the intern added number three: “Howie introduced me to applying economics to prescription drug legislation. I’d never had any idea how that worked, so that got me interested in economics. So that’s how I got three majors. I just have to be pretty efficient with my time.”

Patel had venues other than Washington on his mind. The aspiring medical professional had worked with sick kids in the States in the clean confines of the Ronald McDonald House, but he was very aware that the world is a larger place. “I was born in this country,” he says. “But I’ve seen my mom and dad mop floors when they came to this country and my mom have to get up at 3:00 in the morning.” Still having family and connections in India was part of the decision to go there to work with AIDS patients, but Patel didn’t choose India just because he had a free place to stay. “I wanted to work with AIDS patients, but the opportunities available to students in Africa are just too commercialized,” he says. “The workers arrive as volunteers and they hand out pens with emblems and T-shirts. But the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in India aren’t yet. I wanted to see if it was commercialized or if it was really helping kids, and if so, where would I go to work.”

What he found in India was far beyond the issue of a deadly STD and the education needed to help wipe it out. In working with Committed Communities Development Trust, he found himself working with children whose HIV infection came from a horrifying source—their mothers’ forced involvement as commercial sex workers in the red-light district of Kamathipura. Although the time he spent with the children themselves was rewarding as they created designs using Paintbrush on the computer, practiced their English, and played games, he knew the little girls he was looking at now were just barely escaping being trafficked into the sex trade as well. He spent the summer both working with the children and beginning fund raising that would be effective back in the States and UF’s campus. He also developed a brochure that the NGO can distribute “in hopes of alleviating the stigma associated with AIDS and raising to help AIDS victims,” he says. “Teaching children how to treat a minor cut or a sprained ankle confirmed my desire to become a physician who would practice medicine in a developing country.” But he learned over the course of the summer that the price of involvement with the kids was more than just money and time. “The lady I was working with said it’s not too good to get attached to the kids, but that’s impossible,” he says. “But when I’d come back and ask where they are, she’d just say, ‘Anup, it’s a vicious world out there.’ And that’s the problem. I‘m going to work for a solution.”

Determined to raise serious money to stop the sex trade of these young girls, Patel put his fund raising skills to work while in India. You’d think that his family connections in India—including a grandfather that had been mayor of Bombay—would have given him the social entrance to make fund raising easy, but Patel learned that cultural differences can impede the most passionate effort. “In India, it’s such a different culture, and asking for money, it’s like you’re begging,” he says. Even within his own family, he had work to bridge the cultural disparity. “My grandfathers had never asked anyone for money for anything, so it was a challenge for them, too. But they did it because they knew where the money was going and how committed I was.”

At home, Patel and fellow student Rina Patel created Cents of Relief, a non-profit organization to continue the fundraising efforts. But a web site isn’t any good if nobody knows about it, so the first order of business was to give his cause a public face that would attract others. Enter Gator offensive lineman Max Starks, a friend of Patel’s from Lake Highland Preparatory School, and Starks’ former roommate, Gator wide receiver Carlos Perez. Both ball players got behind Cents of Relief, serving on the national board of the organization and putting their combined muscle into raising relief. “That’s just one example of how he thinks out-of-the-box,” says Dickison. “It was ingenious. I was extremely surprised because I didn’t know that Anup had those kinds of contacts at our large university.” Thus far, money has gone to provide a part-time doctor plus food and other necessities to orphans and AIDS-infected children back in Kamathipura, and there are now Cents of Relief chapters on other U.S. campuses. But the site’s biggest philanthropist is Patel himself. He’s taken all the money from scholarships, including his winnings from the prestigious Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for undergraduate research and the USA Today All-USA Academic First Team, and poured the money into his cause. “He hasn’t kept any of it,” says Dr. Jill Herndon, associate director for research at the UF Institute for Child and Adolescent Research and Evaluation. “He’s been just selfless in the pursuit of his vision.”

Patel doesn’t see what the big deal is. He says that his academics gave him a full ride at UF, minimizing his needs. “I’ve won the scholarships, and why should I just put the money away in the bank if someone in India can use it?” he says. The cost of med school doesn’t seem to unnerve him. “Yes, med school costs a lot of money, but one of the benefits of being a physician is that you make a lot of money to pay back loans. So if I have to take out a loan and work a little bit harder, that’s what, a couple more years before I pay it off?”

The same friends that help him in his push to create relief for Indian children know better than to expect Patel will relax and get lazy during a game on the basketball court or while wakeboarding on the lake. “I’m pretty competitive,” he says. “Here I am playing basketball with Carlos and these guys, and they’re phenomenal athletes! It’s really intense—I mean, I’m this short guy, and they can jump 40 inches off the ground. You’ve got to be competitive when you go out there, but it’s a good competitiveness.” He says it could be a permanent gender-related personality quirk. “It might be a guy thing—even if we go to Gators Dockside, we see who eats the most wings.”

But the competitive nature hasn’t bred a commensurate ego. “He’s a humble, modest guy with a huge desire to better the world,” says Forman. Dickison concurs: “I wish I could have more students with his modesty and presence. You recognize him as a person of character immediately.” And the man who bartered a perfect GPA for a spot in his lab says that despite the massive body of research, academic work, and charitable efforts to his credit, Patel has yet to reach his peak. “I’ve never seen him struggle,” Berns says. “He’s going to be exceptional as a physician.” —SRR

Contact Patel at anupaap@ufl.edu.