Teebro Paul, a senior in from Brentwood High School and an intern in the lab of Larry Marnett, dean emeritus of basic sciences, won first place in the Occupational Safety and Health event and second place in the Creative Problem Solving event at the recent Health Occupations Students of America International leadership conference in Houston, Texas.
To recognize their members, HOSA hosts regional competitions at different levels and the top three high school and college teams can qualify to compete in the international competition. Paul qualified when his team placed first in the Creative Problem Solving event at Tennessee’s 2024 State Leadership Conference. Paul’s sister Trishita, also a student at Brentwood High School, placed in the top five in the Medical Math competition and qualified for the international competition.
This year’s HOSA International Leadership Conference hosted over 11,000 students who competed across dozens of events. For the CPS event, Paul and his team first took a test on decision making and creative thinking. The top 40 teams then had 30 minutes to prepare an eight-minute presentation in which they provided solutions to an unknown medical scenario to a panel of judges. Paul’s team placed second.
“We had been preparing for months with practice tests and topics, so it felt surreal when they called out our names,” Paul said.
Paul also competed individually in the Occupational Safety and Health event, for which he had to learn about medical safety practices and provided new solutions to improve welfare in medicine. He placed first in the OSH event.
“I’m really proud of Teebro’s performance at the HOSA competition. His ability to solve problems and think on his feet really shone through,” Marnett said. “He displays the same skills in his work in our lab.”
Although Paul is interested in studying public health in college, he believes that it “is based on understanding changes in microbiology and then using that information to improve medicine throughout the world,” thus his interest in working in the Marnett lab.
Paul’s research focuses on the binding properties of cyclooxygenase-2, the enzyme that catalyzes the committed step in the production of prostaglandins (lipids with a variety of hormone-like effects) and the molecular target for non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. He is also working on an alpaca-derived, COX-2-specific nanobody that could one day be used as a diagnostic tool for conditions that express high levels of COX-2, such as inflammation or cancers. Paul is using biolayer interferometry, a technique that measures the amount of light reflected off a biosensor tip, to investigate the effect of mutations in the nanobodies.
Wherever life takes Paul—whatever discoveries or accomplishments he makes—he’ll bring the same dedication he brought to the HOSA competition.
“Winning was just such an incredible moment. It felt like everything we worked for finally came together,” Paul said.
HOSA is a global, student-led organization that provides leadership development opportunities, motivation, and recognition to middle school, secondary, postsecondary, and collegiate students with an interest in health and biomedical sciences. HOSA aims to empower its members and future health professionals to become leaders in the global health community, especially considering the acute shortage of qualified healthcare workers that was amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.