Sabrina Grewal: Loyola's Choudhury Sarkar-Dey Medal

Exemplifies the Integration of Scientific Excellence, Service, and Leadership

The voices of my loved ones echoed around me in a beautiful harmony. Each song different, but each one just as special. It was my birthday, and I was being sung to in eight languages. Around me stood the people who raised me: loved ones from different countries who had welcomed me into their cultures throughout my life. I am a first-generation, third-culture American with parents from Peru and India, and my parents’ international friends have become my family. Growing up in this global community taught me that across every culture, people share the same need to feel seen, cared for, and valued. Loyola became the place where everything I was taught about caring for others finally had somewhere to thrive.

At Loyola, I founded the Neuroscience Foundation to bring science and community service together. This became a campus-wide organization connecting STEM students to real human needs. I built and led student committees that organized fundraising, outreach, and education initiatives supporting people living with Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, schizophrenia, depression, and other neurological and psychiatric conditions.
Through the Foundation, we launched dementia letter-writing campaigns for seniors in long-term care so they can feel less lonely in their isolation. We organized school-supply drives for pediatric tutoring centers serving neurodivergent children, ran donation drives for pediatric hospitals, and held campus-wide fundraisers that directly supported patients navigating serious mental illness. We also created student-led research forums and service committees so Loyola students could design their own projects that they were passionate about.

This is when I began to understand how deeply science and service belong together.

One of the most meaningful programs to grow out of this work was the Immigrant Health Access Initiative, which I founded after working as a Certified Nursing Assistant. In the nursing home, I serve as the primary caretaker for elderly residents living with neurological and physical decline, feeding, bathing, changing them, and sitting with them in their most vulnerable moments. I care for residents from every background with the same patience and respect I would want for my own family, listening to their stories and making sure they feel cared for.
Many of my patients are Spanish-speaking, and I regularly serve as a translator between them and English-speaking staff where I help patients express pain and understand their care. Through this work, I saw how easily immigrant families were left out of healthcare simply because of language and unfamiliar systems. It reminded me of my own family: my mother from Peru, father from India, and the many loved ones who had once needed help finding their footing in the USA.
Those moments followed me back to Loyola, and that is where I began the Immigrant Health Access Initiative.

This is a bilingual, community-based healthcare outreach program. I recruited and trained a five-student team and led in-person outreach at ESL centers, churches, and Spanish-language community events. We met families where they gathered and provided one-on-one healthcare navigation: scheduling appointments, explaining insurance and eligibility, and connecting them to clinics like Shepard’s Clinic, the Esperanza Center and low-cost providers.
The first person I ever helped was a woman from Guatemala who had avoided medical care for years because she had no insurance. I sat with her and helped her schedule her first appointment. When she later told me that she had gone, it deeply touched me because it meant she was finally getting the care she deserved.

To date, our team has connected more than 50 immigrant individuals and families in Baltimore and Raleigh to healthcare they otherwise would not have accessed. This has grown into a network of care that now stretches across two cities, and I hope to continue this work wherever I go. It is my ultimate goal to expand this abroad where there are large refugee communities.

Working so closely with families changed how I approach research. Over the past four years, I have worked in neuroscience across both industry and academia. At Tellus Therapeutics, a biotechnology startup developing treatments for leukodystrophies in newborns, I analyzed NICU clinical data and built disease-progression models and visualizations for investors. My work helped translate numbers into showing human impact and how each data point represented someone who relied on the delivery of the drug moving forward.

Later, as an NIH-funded undergraduate researcher at UNC Chapel Hill, I built a novel mouse model to study how stress-driven alcohol use accelerates Alzheimer’s-related neurodegeneration. I analyzed behavioral data and presented my findings at two research conferences. Learning about stress-related addiction made me think differently about the people I was serving and the barriers they were facing.

This commitment to access led me to write Un Día en La Escuela, a bilingual children’s book designed to help children learn in two languages. I took the book directly into classrooms at Archbishop Borders School in Baltimore and Kiddie Academy in North Carolina, reading aloud to students and watching them switch between English and Spanish. I read the book in community spaces like Barnes & Noble so families could share the experience together, and I donated copies to schools and learning centers across Maryland and North Carolina so children without access to bilingual materials could still build language skills early.

This book has now reached families in seven different countries around the world, giving children across cultures the opportunity to learn multiple languages. Knowing that children around the world are learning to read in two languages through this, remains one of the most meaningful parts of my college experience.

Loyola has given me the platform to lead through service as a Division 1 athlete on the Tennis Team. Competing at a national level means representing Loyola wherever we go, and I take the honor very seriously. Through Loyola’s Women in Sports Day, I welcome families and young girls to campus using athletics to build confidence, inspiring the next generation of strong women. Our team also partners with Loyola’s Dream on 3, raising funds for children with disabilities who dream of playing sports. Through Loyola athletics, I have learned to be a leader who lifts others up.

Loyola also gives me the space to serve as a volunteer Spanish tutor, helping other students gain confidence in a language that allows them to connect with others. Also, as a Hospitality Minister in Loyola’s chapel, I get to welcome students and visitors to Mass each week, helping to foster a campus environment rooted in care and belonging. In every role, I try to reflect the values that Loyola’s Jesuit education has taught me.

Dr. Sarkar-Dey’s story honors everyone who has had to find their footing in a new place. Her story honors every student who has overcome hardships in the pursuit of education, and every educator who grounds themselves in serving those who need it most. It is an honor to have her name attached to a medal that celebrates diversity and service. Having been raised by a community of immigrants from around the world, I understand what it means to come to a new place with courage. I hope to continue to spend my life serving global communities, carrying Loyola’s values of compassion and service everywhere I go.