In a body that rebels, the search for a delicate balance
When Elliot Akama-Garren was in high school and tried to envision his future, his path was by no means clear to him. “Growing up, I was interested in nearly every subject,” he says. “I could see myself becoming a historian, a journalist, a scientist, a physicist, or a chemist,” he says. Now a senior at MIT nearing the completion of his biology degree, Akama-Garren has found and cultivated his passions, which range from research to ice hockey to teaching. Recently selected as one of this year’s 32 American recipients of the Rhodes Scholarship, Akama-Garren — along with two other MIT recipients — will spend the next academic year pursuing studies and research at Oxford University. Akama-Garren’s research interests lie in immunology, a fascination that began before his junior year of high school. That summer he worked with Bill Robinson, an associate professor of medicine at Stanford University, to study rheumatoid arthritis — an...