Sponsored by the U.S.-Ireland Alliance, the scholarship covers tuition and accommodations, as well as stipends for living expenses and travel, for one academic year of postgraduate study in any discipline offered by institutions of higher learning in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Wragan, from Washington, D.C., is majoring in neuroscience and minoring in chemistry in the School of Arts & Sciences. With the scholarship she plans to pursue a master’s degree in neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin to study the impact of inflammation on chronic pain. She eventually plans to pursue an M.D./Ph.D. in neuroscience to further expand her neuroscience research.
She has been a research assistant since May 2020 at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. She also has conducted research through summer internships at George Washington University Hospital, Pomona College, and the Royal Botanic Gardens of Edinburgh in Scotland.
Wragan is president and founder of the student-led Satellite Learning Program, a virtual service that provides free one-on-one tutoring to K-12 students, for which she received the Student Creativity Grant from The Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity. She founded a branch of this program at Penn that tutors homeless youth in Philadelphia. Wragan also tutors biology and chemistry at Penn and volunteers at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration Hospital’s spinal rehabilitation clinic.
The Mitchell Scholarship, named in honor of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, is designed to introduce and connect future American leaders to Ireland while recognizing and fostering intellectual achievement, leadership, and a commitment to community and public service.
Wragan applied for the scholarship with the support of Penn’s Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowship. She is the fifth Penn student to receive the scholarship since the inaugural class of Mitchell Scholars in 2001.
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
