The Sachs Scholarship is intended to broaden the global experience of its recipients by providing them with the opportunity to study, work or travel abroad after graduation. It was established by classmates and friends of Daniel Sachs, a distinguished Princeton student athlete in the Class of 1960 who attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Sachs died of cancer at age 28 in 1967. The award is given to those who best exemplify Sachs’ character, intelligence and commitment, and whose scholarship is most likely to benefit the public.

Sample, of Alexandria, Virginia, plans to use the Sachs Global Scholarship for a yearlong research project in the lab of Nobuyasu Koga, a professor at Osaka University’s Institute for Protein Research in Japan, where he hopes to use computational modeling to design new proteins for biotechnological applications.

“I am very grateful to my mentors, professors, family, friends and peers for their support. Without them, these pursuits would not be possible,” Sample said. “I am also thankful that the Sachs selection committee saw something in me, and for Princeton’s generous financial aid program, which enabled me to attend this institution.”

Sample is majoring in chemical and biological engineering. He began studying Japanese at Princeton and has pursued those studies for three years.

In his essay for the scholarship, he wrote that “the Sachs Global Scholarship would enable me to enter the rapidly growing field of computational protein design. This area of science bears promising applications for therapeutics and diagnostics that enhance public welfare.

“My proposal is the convergence of my love for the Japanese language and my lifelong goal of applying science to alleviate suffering,” he wrote.

After his year in Japan, Sample said he plans to return to the U.S. to enter a Ph.D. program in bioengineering or computational biology. He hopes to eventually become a protein scientist and help develop lifesaving therapeutic medicines.

Sample said his research experiences at Princeton were the inspiration for his interest in a career in science. He has conducted research in faculty labs within the departments of chemical and biological engineering, chemistry and molecular biology, including his studies on cell signaling in the lab of Jared Toettcher, an associate professor of molecular biology and bioengineering.

Jannette Carey, an associate professor of chemistry, said that after Sample completed her graduate course in biophysical chemistry as a first-year student, she asked him to collaborate on a textbook expanding on concepts from class. Sample’s name will be included on the cover of “Ligand-Binding Basics: Evaluating Intermolecular Affinity, Specificity, Stoichiometry, and Cooperativity,” which will be released in May — a rare distinction for an undergraduate student, “even at Princeton,” Carey added.

For his senior thesis, Sample is working in the lab of Jerelle Joseph, assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering and bioengineering, on computationally modeling RNA and protein interactions. He is focusing on a protein called TDP-43 and its ability to form biomolecular condensates, a phenomenon relevant to neurodegenerative diseases like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal dementia. He received the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering’s Christodoulos A. Floudas Chemical Process Design Award his junior year.

Professor of Chemistry Michael Hecht, who taught Sample in a graduate course on proteins last year, said he was “particularly impressed by his insight on a range of complex and difficult topics.”

“I teach this course as a seminar where we discuss and critique papers from the scientific literature. In this interactive setting, Ethan was superb,” he wrote in his letter of recommendation. It was Hecht who introduced Sample to Professor Koga.

In addition to his academic achievements, Sample co-founded the student-run Princeton Biotechnology Group in 2022 and has served as a co-director.

Beyond campus, he has been a computational chemistry intern at D.E. Shaw Research in New York. He also interned with the Inova Advanced Lung Disease and Transplant Program at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus in Virginia, where he shadowed transplant pulmonologists who treated patients with cystic fibrosis.

In addition to Sample, Noah James has been named as the Sachs Scholar at Worcester College at the University of Oxford, and Oxford student Farzana Salik will spend next academic year as a Sachs Visiting Scholar at Princeton. 

To learn more about this year's Sachs Scholars, read the full article originally published on the Princeton home page.