Lama Alshamroukh
wvu pre-med student majoring in biology
Lama Alshamroukh is a biology pre-med student at West Virginia University and a driven student leader passionate about research, mentorship, and academic excellence. She serves as an Eberly College Student Ambassador and a Presidential Student Ambassador, and she is actively involved in multiple research environments that refl ect her long-term goal of pursuing medicine.
Through her Leadership and research experience, Lama has learned that the biggest challenge is that research isn't intelligence. Its resilience. She believes resilience is often treated as something students should already have, rather than a skill that can be built through failure, refl ection, and honest support systems.
In her TEDxWVU talk, Lama introduces a two-step method for becoming a resilient researcher: fail, then admit and fi x it. By challenging perfectionism and redefi ning what it means to fail and succeed, she hopes to inspire students to stop measuring their worth by fl awless outcomes and start building the confi dence to learn through setbacks. Lamas' mission is simple: To make research feel less intimidating, More human and more accessible for the next generations of scholars.