Malcolm Harrison
Hometown: Summit
Major: A.S. in Chemistry
Class of 2024
Malcolm Harrison ’24, strives to earn an associate degree in chemistry and use computer simulations to help develop medications for neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s. Harrison has worked on numerous research projects with published findings and also presented at the American Chemical Society’s conference in New Orleans. At CCM he is enrolled in the Honors Program and is a campus student leader, having served as the president of the Medical Careers Club and the National Society of Leadership and Success, respectively.
“The faculty at CCM are extremely helpful,” says Harrison, “and encourage me to pursue research opportunities both in and out of the classroom.”
CCM student Malcolm Harrison considers himself an unconventional college student. He started at the University of Miami with plans to become a nurse. After two years as a Hurricane, Harrison returned home to Summit, New Jersey, taking a gap year and working as a personal trainer. His love for fitness led him to enroll in the exercise science program at CCM. Anatomy and physiology courses further ignited his passion to focus on advanced coursework in the sciences.
His goal to graduate from CCM with an associate degree in chemistry has multiple meanings. The first is to do research in order to help his great aunt with late-stage Parkinson’s Disease, an idiopathic neurodegenerative disorder with the second-highest prevalence rate behind Alzheimer’s Disease.
“The faculty at CCM are extremely helpful,” says Harrison, “and encourage me to pursue research opportunities both in and out of the classroom.”
Through the Honors Program on campus, Harrison was able to study the pathologic protein responsible for neurodegeneration, deploying computational tools and contributing to the writing of scientific reviews.
One of his professors, Dr. John Berger, shared an NSF Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship being held at Stevens Institute of Technology. “I would not have known about or applied for the internship at Stevens Institute if Dr. Berger had not mentioned it to our class,” admits Harrison.
Harrison worked with Dr. Pin-Kuang Lai, a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at Stevens, performing computer simulations to study the pathologic protein responsible for neurodegeneration. They analyzed how Prasinezumab, a drug currently in clinical trials, interacts with the protein.
“Using experimentally determined structural information,” says Harrison, “I was able to model these proteins in a complex and perform molecular simulations to better understand the binding mechanism between them.”
Upon completion of the ten-week program, Harrison showcased his work and achieved first place in a poster presentation. He was able to continue his research at Stevens in a remote capacity. He has been working remotely as a computational biophysics intern with AxBio based in Santa Clara, California.
Harrison has not only been a stellar academic student but also a student leader on the CCM campus. He founded and presided over the Medical Careers Club.
“I created the Medical Careers Club to help students identify and obtain research internships, connect with and shadow medical professionals, and find ways to volunteer in a healthcare setting,” says Harrison.
He is president of the National Society of Leadership and Success, a curriculum committee senator within the college’s Student Government Association, and a peer tutor helping others with their biology, chemistry, and anatomy and physiology courses.