Social Sciences grad sets sights on Harvard PhD
Marissa Ledger, in her element surrounded by moulds of skulls in an anthropology lab on campus. Ledger is heading to Harvard this fall as one of only four students accepted into the university's Human Evolutionary Biology program.
Marissa Ledger is trading maroon for crimson as she moves straight from her undergraduate studies at McMaster into an exclusive PhD program at Harvard.
Ledger is one of just four students being accepted into the Ivy League university’s Human Evolutionary Biology program this fall.
“I thought I would have a shot at getting in, so I thought I might as well take it,” says Ledger, who will receive both an honours anthropology degree and a life sciences degree at this year’s convocation. “It’s proof that if you take a chance, it might pay off.”
Ledger has spent a number of summers in Italy, studying ancient human skeletal remains at a bioarchaeology field school run by McMaster’s Tracy Prowse. She’ll return to Italy this summer to work as a research assistant for Megan Brickley, who’s looking for evidence of rickets and vitamin D deficiencies in infants who lived in the Roman Empire.
“She has been such a good student and a great person,” says Prowse. “Not only is her work consistent, but she has taken advantage of opportunities outside of the classroom to give her more research experience.”
As a student, Ledger surprised her professors – including molecular geneticist and biological anthropologist Hendrik Poinar – when she concluded that lipids found on the walls of pathogens could be used as bio-markers by anthropologists as useful tools for diagnosing tuberculosis in past populations.
According to Prowse, it is this type of research and innovative thinking that secured Ledger one of the four available seats in the Harvard PhD program and a scholarship package that totals nearly a quarter of a million dollars.
Ledger, however, credits her McMaster professors for her success.
“The department has really become like a family,” says Ledger, who left her home in Calgary to study anthropology at McMaster. “Professor Prowse gave me a lot of opportunities and took a real interest in helping me and the rest of the students.”
Ledger is one of more than 800 students who will earn a degree in Social Science June 12 at two ceremonies happening in downtown Hamilton.
