Faces of Philanthropy

Natalie Malluru

 

Top Scholar. Archer Fellow. Developer of Pocket VAX, a mobile app to store personal vaccination records. Founder of a meal share program to address food insecurity on campus. Medical volunteer at a clinic serving the homeless and others in need in downtown San Antonio. Competitive dancer and production manager with UTSA Sapna, an Indian fusion dance team.

For Natalie Malluru, a senior public health major from Austin, her years at UTSA have been filled with challenges and opportunities that have fed her soul and cemented her desire to become a physician. And on March 5, she found out that she has been accepted into her “top school,” The University of Texas at Austin’s Dell Medical School, to continue her journey.

“I think I entered into college thinking that, if I wanted to get into medical school, there would be kind of a checklist that I had to hit – do the research, do the shadowing, and I don’t think that I was excited about it.” she recalled. “But through the Top Scholar program, through the financial support, I’ve really been able to carve out my own unique experiences and do things because I’m intrinsically motivated to do them and not because of a pre-med checklist.”

An example of that is her time as an Archer Fellow in Washington, D.C., where she interned in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

“One of my first tasks was reviewing one of the final drafts of the 21st Century Cures Act. Through this experience, I learned how this policy fosters medical innovation by allowing patients to have complete autonomy of their health records through modern software apps,” she recalled, noting that the assignment is what sparked her interest in developing Pocket VAX, which is available in both the Apple Store and Google Play Store.

Though she had no specific experience in app development, Natalie decided to take a leap of faith and was mentored by her internship department in D.C. and the Top Scholar program at UTSA, through which she received funding from the Carlos and Malú Alvarez Special Opportunities Fund.

Natalie’s app has been described by Dr. Drew Chapman, director of nationally competitive awards for the UTSA Honors College, as “a testament to what is possible when you provide a talented student with the funding to support them in their pursuits.”

With medical school on the horizon, Natalie is looking to a future filled with new challenges. “I haven’t really identified what specialty I’m passionate about yet,” she noted.

“Typically, students decide during their third or fourth year of medical school, but I do know I’ve cultivated an interest in health information technology over the last couple of years, so I think I want to continue doing research in that field or think about developing more apps and learning how to compound what I’m learning in medical school with my interest in health technology to see where that takes me.”