STAYING HUNGRY
A Texas A&M Professor’s Journey
By SARAH ELMER
G
rowing up as the son of farmers
in rural India, D. Samba Reddy, a
professor at the Texas A&M University
Health Science Center College of Medicine,
was familiar with food insecurity at a
young age. Though the recurring need
for food drove Reddy to work for long
hours in extreme weather conditions,
he also had a different type of hunger —
intellectual hunger.
The desire to satiate his intellectual
curiosity has resulted in breakthrough
research to help those affected by serious
medical conditions, including epilepsy,
traumatic brain injury, nerve agent
poisoning, perimenstrual seizures, and
post-partum depression. Reddy’s scientific
achievements are extraordinary, but
his journey from living in rural India to
becoming the youngest full professor in
his department is inconceivable.
Reddy was born in Cherlapally, a rural
village in southern India. An estimated 80
percent of the Indian population is involved
in agriculture, including Reddy’s family.
Because of his family’s limited financial
means, Reddy was restricted to attending
government-run schools in his village
taught in his native language, Telugu.
After becoming the first in his family
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to complete primary school, Reddy was
eager to get started with middle school.
“In our village, we don’t have beyond
primary school,” Reddy says. “So, at the
end of primary school, you only know how
to read and write in your native language.
Most of the students would stop at that
point and keep working on the farm, but I
was not happy with that.”
The nearest middle school was located
in a neighboring village roughly 6.2 miles
away from Cherlapally. He could either
walk the 12.4-mile round trip to school
every day, or he would have to give up
continuing his education and work on
the farm instead. Reddy’s deep-rooted
hunger for learning drove him to choose
the former.
For three years, Reddy made the same
exhausting commute every day. School
started at 9 a.m. every morning, but Reddy
often could not get to class until 10:30 or
11 a.m. because he needed to finish his
morning shift on the farm and then walk
to school. By the time he finished and got
home, he was exhausted and hungry and
struggled to study.
The schooling system was set up
in such a way that if Reddy could pass
his final exams in tenth grade, he could
graduate high school and attend college,
despite failing grades seven through nine.
“If you get anything above 70 percent
on the exams, they call it ‘first class,’
which is equal to earning an A here,”
Reddy says. “When I passed the exams in
tenth grade, it was a big surprise for my
entire town. That was my first A grade
since primary school. From that point,
there was no looking back.”
Reddy’s fascination with science led
him to pursue a diploma in pharmacy at
Government Junior College. This was the
first time Reddy’s education was taught in
English, not in his native language.
“The challenges increased a thousand-
fold,” Reddy says. “I didn’t know much
English at first and I really struggled for
the first six months in the program.”
After his adjustment period, Reddy
ended up being the highest scorer in the
state during his second year.
Soon, Reddy graduated and became
a licensed pharmacy technician. After
working in the pharmacy for a while,
Reddy was accepted to the highly
selective Kakatiya University on a full-
ride scholarship to begin his Bachelor of
Science in pharmacy. During his fourth
year, Reddy earned admission to Panjab