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Gianna Muscarella wants to help some of the most vulnerable crime victims when she grows up – people who are victims of sexual assault and abuse.
As a child, Muscarella would sit in front of a screen and watch reruns of Law & Order: SVU, “every day,” she remembers.
The show, and the theory of science behind the acting and the way it melded with the law, led her to look into the field of forensic nursing – and a love of science. “I know it’s TV and cinema, but most of the stuff they had on there was fairly accurate,” Muscarella explained. “So, being a forensic nurse would allow me to not only study medicine, but I’d also have to take law, just need to testify in court for someone that has been involved in a case.”
The seventeen-year-old member of the Niceville Wrestling team will get her chance to wrangle her first match in the field later this June when she attends a Congress of Future Medical Leaders at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell. The three-day event identifies and prepares the best and brightest scientific minds in the United States for careers in the medical sciences.
Her invite-only ticket was punched by 2007 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and fellow Italian-American Mario Capecchi, who saw her resume and selected her to attend.
Muscarella says her commitment to academic excellence has already opened plenty of doors for her, including admission to St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania. It’s also made her a competitive candidate for some of the country’s most prestigious universities and colleges, including Notre Dame, UNC Chapel Hill, Tennessee and the United States Air Force Academy. – along with the University of Florida and Florida State University.
But for now – she’s more than excited about the opportunity to meet the best and brightest in medicine today – including several of her contemporaries. “There’s going to be some child or teen prodigies that have created insane technology that help with medicine, so getting people introduced not only to the people but also to the product is super important for advancements,” Muscarella said, “and also if people aren’t introduced to this and they have a brilliant mind, their mind would kind of go to waste not knowing that they could use it for medical purposes.”
The National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists organizes the Congress with the stated mission to “identify prospective medical talent at the earliest possible age and help these students acquire necessary experience and skills to take them to the doorstep of this vital career.”
