Howard University Likely to Earn Highest Research Status, Only HBCU To Do So

Ananya Hota wanted to figure out how to curb diseases that resist antibiotics. So as a sophomore, she went to Howard University’s sleek microbiology lab, where she’d been doing research since she was a freshman, and started testing how some bacteria’s pigments promote skin infections. She was part of an endowed scholarship program for Howard students in STEM, buoyed by an adviser and a lab that had also won grants from the National Institutes of Health. The lab work would become the genesis of her honors thesis. Hota’s work is part of a years-long effort to bolster research and confer more doctorates at the historically Black university in Northwest Washington. The work is paying off.