27-year-old student leads U. research

Andrew Posselt said he has always enjoyed research. Now the 27-year-old Medical School student must learn to enjoy being in the limelight. Today, Posslet's name is listed on top of a Science magazine report on University researchers' discovery of a cure for diabetes in laboratory rats. While Posselt's discovery is not a cure for diabetes in humans, it is another step forward. It also has major implications for the growing field of transplant surgery. Born in Czechloslovakia, Posselt started working in research labs while attending a Canadian boarding school. In his fourth year as an undergraduate at Stanford University, Posselt published two papers on research he conducted on a drug that blocks the production of bilirubin in neonatal rats. The research may have applications for the treatment of liver diseases. For the last five years, Posselt has been at the University working toward a medical degree and a doctorate in immunology. Posselt worked for two years in the Surgery Department lab on the research being published today, sometimes for as long as 16 hours a day. The soft-spoken young man said he might take it easy for a while, but that a researcher's work is never done. He said someone still has to interpret the findings and use them to go forward. Posselt called science and medicine "tremendous fields," and advised students interested in research to seek out professors who will put them to work. "Research is very self-motivated," Posselt said. "It's much different from the classroom."

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