A chance meeting because of a friendly dog led college student Marwa Rahim to an internship at the UPMC Vision Institute.
Andrew Eller, MD, Co-Division Chief of Retina and Vitreous Services, lives near the Chatham campus, where he walks his dog Cooper most nights around the quad. One evening, when Marwa was walking to the library, Cooper ran across the quad toward her. At first, she was a bit frightened, but Cooper was so big with white fluffy fur that she had to give him a hug.
Marwa came to the United States in September 2021, after the fall of Afghanistan, which Dr. Eller learned when he started talking with her. “Coming to Pittsburgh and starting my journey at Chatham University has been a very meaningful experience for me,” she said. She is now a senior majoring in Human Biology with a minor in Neuroscience.
Dr. Eller and Marwa continued their relationship from their initial meeting. He invited her to some Persian student events at Pitt and introduced her to some of Pitt’s Iranian doctors. Just before summer break, the two had lunch. Dr. Eller assumed Marwa would be returning to the D.C. area to stay with her family. However, when she mentioned that she was having difficulty securing an internship for the summer, Dr. Eller said he would help her find one at the Vision Institute.
At Marwa’s invitation, Dr. Eller attended a science fair at Chatham, where Marwa presented her project of growing yeast in a culture, similar to kombucha. “With this experience in culture methods, it seemed like a summer internship in our Ocular Microbiology laboratory with Dr. Rob Shanks and Eric Romanowski would be a natural fit for her,” Dr. Eller recalled. “Thanks to a generous grant to the Eye & Ear Foundation from one of my grateful patients, I was able to provide financial support to Marwa for her internship.”
During her internship, Marwa helped investigate new treatment options for endophthalmitis, a rare but devastating infection that occurs inside the eye. According to Dr. Shanks, Director of the Charles T. Campbell Ophthalmic Microbiology Laboratory, the project was developed in collaboration with Dr. Eller and focused on evaluating whether a class of antibiotics known as oxazolidinones could be repurposed for ocular infections.
“The work is particularly timely given the growing threat of multidrug-resistant and pan-resistant bacterial pathogens,” Dr. Shanks said. “Marwa, working alongside other team members — including Emily Young and Eric Romanowski — evaluated two oxazolidinone antibiotics against bacterial isolates recovered from patients with endophthalmitis. These drugs are of special interest because they not only inhibit bacterial growth but can also reduce the production of bacterial toxins, providing a potentially powerful two-pronged approach to treatment.”
Dr. Shanks said Marwa “demonstrated exceptional dedication” to the project, where she tested numerous clinical isolates for susceptibility to the two antibiotics and helped generate highly promising preliminary results. The findings are expected to be submitted for publication in the near future, with Marwa recognized as a contributing author.
Marwa said she personally learned so much from her internship. It was her first hands-on laboratory experience working with bacteria, so she learned many new techniques and gained a much better understanding of what research looks like in a real lab. “I also really enjoyed the teamwork and getting to know the people I worked with,” she added. “Everyone made the experience very meaningful for me.”
Marwa is also featured in a book, where Dr. Eller is mentioned. The Last Free Women: A Daring Escape from Afghanistan and Coming of Age in America, released on September 8, is “the extraordinary account of the New York Times’ effort to save hundreds of lives during the 2021 Afghanistan evacuation, highlighting four exceptional young women, who, having escaped the fate of their fellow countrywomen back home, now face the challenges of forging a new life n a new land, a new language, and a new culture.” Marwa is one of the four women. The day she was supposed to start back at medical school after the pandemic, she had only hours to escape the Taliban.
After graduation, Marwa plans to apply to medical school. “Right now, I’m continuing to focus on my classes and gaining more clinical and research experience as I prepare for that next step,” she said.