Senior Jose Melo has been awarded the Sherif Nada Legacy Award by Citizen Schools. Two Massachusetts high school seniors are honored with the award each year, having demonstrated “academic success, leadership skills, and commitment to community service.” The award honors former national board chair Sherif Nada, who exhibited such qualities. As a recipient, Jose will receive a $1,000 scholarship to put towards his first year of college expenses, in addition to guidance and support from Sherif and his wife, Mary, in finding a job and/or internship.

Though he has excelled in a number of fields, Jose is particularly passionate about science and engineering. For the past two summers, he has participated in the Broad Summer Scholars Program at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, where he studied biomedical engineering. During his time at the Broad, Jose developed a machine learning algorithm to distinguish between natural and synthetic DNA plasmids. He will attend Bowdoin College in the fall.