Biochemistry major Suchitra Arun spends her days decoding plant and human diseases and her nights leading a community of heavy metal music fans.
At the University of Maryland’s Plant Diagnostic Lab, senior biochemistry major Suchitra Arun is the main “plant doctor” handling DNA-based diagnoses. When local plant nursery owners or farmers send their sick plants to the lab looking for answers, her job is to figure out what’s wrong with them at the DNA level. She extracts genetic material from a sample and sequences it, working backward to check the genomic information against a known catalog of plant pathogens.
“Because there’s almost a new case every week or so, it usually feels like I’m always running into new problems to solve,” Arun said. “It’s kind of a rhythm I’ve really come to love, and something I look forward to every time I come to work.”
For Arun, a lab shift usually means diligently decoding microscopic mysteries—while blasting grindcore, a heavy-metal subgenre that fuses hardcore punk with aggressive extreme beats. Arun says the music's fast pace and complexity help her focus in the lab, and its rebellious outlook keeps her energized when challenges crop up.
“I tend to blast it in the background while I’m running samples. So far, people haven’t complained,” Arun joked.
Music has been a serious pursuit for Arun, not just a soundtrack. She first heard heavier artists like Linkin Park and Metallica when she was four years old—and she was instantly hooked. Captivated by the music's raw energy, she started listening to subgenres like thrash and emo by high school.
After years of guitar lessons, she taught herself to drum and now sings and plays drums in local bands. She's also the president of Metalheads of Maryland, a student organization of roughly 200 members that connects metal fans on campus to each other and to the wider music scene in Baltimore and D.C.
“I used to be very insecure and very shy,” Arun explained. “Learning to hold my ground in a room with other people with strong opinions made me more confident everywhere else, including in a lab and on a stage. I could talk to professors about what I wanted to do.”
Disease mysteries
Most of the cases Arun sees close within a week. One did not. It was off tempo from the start—Arun had no official diagnosis, even after weeks of genetic sequencing. But she refused to give up. She kept extracting and analyzing different genetic sequences from the sample, running through hours of metal playlists to stay motivated.
Months in, Arun realized that she and her colleagues were chasing what appeared to be a disease that didn’t match anything in the catalog. In the end, they discovered an apparently new species of Pseudomonas, a bacterium not closely related to any known plant pathogen in the group.
“Most undergraduates would have moved on after the first few rounds came back inconclusive,” said Entomology Assistant Research Professor Ana Cristina Fulladolsa, who directs the lab. “But Suchitra kept going against all odds, and that’s how we ended up with something none of us expected.”
This past summer, Arun took her disease detective skills to a very different setting: the Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Facility at the University of Maryland, Baltimore School of Pharmacy, where scientists use powerful magnets to reveal how molecules are built and how they move. At the NMR Facility, Arun shifted her research focus from analyzing plant pathogen microbes to studying proteins linked to human diseases. She prepared protein samples and loaded them into powerful magnets, looking at how proteins tied to Alzheimer’s disease shift structure and behavior in response to specific drugs.
Arun’s interest in medicine sparked after losing her grandmother in 2022 to a bacterial infection that didn’t respond to treatment and her grandfather in 2024 to cancer that proved untreatable.
“I’ve always been interested in chemistry, but those were the events that pushed me toward medicine,” Arun said. “Because of those experiences, I’m drawn to illnesses that don’t have good options for treatments and are ‘unsolvable’—bacterial and viral infections, cancers, autoimmune disease.”
In the long term, Arun hopes to make a difference in the medical world and save lives with her research. She plans to work in medicinal chemistry and drug development after she graduates. In the short term, as president of Metalheads of Maryland, she’ll hold listening parties, organize carpools to shows in Baltimore and D.C., swap patches to sew onto members' "battle jackets," and put on another Shellfest, the club's showcase concert for student bands.
“Metal’s given me the confidence to be who I am, as a person and as a scientist. It’s not just a genre of music, it’s also an entire community,” Arun said. “I hope that I’ll be able to help people in the club grow into themselves as well.”
