McNair Scholar Joshua Ito explores causes of musculoskeletal growth disorders in children.
One in 10 children in the United States suffers from a musculoskeletal condition, and each year many parents face the difficult news of such a diagnosis. Thankfully, pediatricians across the country are already at work researching the causes of these conditions and continue to unravel new discoveries in search of the truth.
But not all discoveries are made by decorated career scientists. Some are made by students, including Joshua Ito, a senior Nutrition major at The University of Texas at Austin.
When Joshua arrived on campus from Houston, Texas, he did so with a passion for natural sciences and an appetite for understanding how the human body maintains itself. In his first year, he joined UT Austin’s Freshman Research Initiative program, and as a mentee received guidance to help hone his studies and career.
“I wanted to study medicine and be at the front of medical research. When you’re looking at the Nutrition faculty here, they’re all studying real diseases,” Joshua said. “They’re doing clinical trials, they’re doing experiments, and they’re doing a lot of pre-clinical work.”
In his sophomore year, Joshua advanced within the Texas Interdisciplinary Plan (TIP) Scholars program from mentee to mentor, where he began guiding incoming Longhorns along their career paths. Emboldened by his studies in nutritional sciences and inspired by the groundbreaking work being performed by UT faculty, Joshua contacted professor Ryan Gray in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and soon began working with the professor as a research assistant.
“We use mouse and zebrafish models to study human disease, particularly the genetic interactions of pediatric musculoskeletal disorders,” Joshua said.
He continued, “One of the big things that our lab has done, which I have been working closely with since I started there in June 2023, was with a disease called adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, the most common pediatric muscular disorder.”
This research is a collaborative effort with professor Gray and other students in the lab, including PhD candidate Valeria Aceves. Joshua’s focal project, however, was a short stature study in collaboration with fellow undergraduate Kylie Mathers.
“We are studying some of the genetic underpinnings of short stature and getting a better idea of how it happens and how this one genetic mutation affects that,” Joshua said.
Joshua explains that his concentration is on SOX-9, a protein that regulates the body’s development of the skeleton and cartilage.
And his dedication has paid off. Joshua presented his findings at a national McNair Scholars and Undergraduate Research conference at UCLA in June 2025.
“This summer, I was really challenged to take a sophisticated project and produce novel research,” he said. “I was in the lab maybe 10 hours a day working on this because I thought something would come out of it. Eventually in June, when we were preparing to give a 15-minute talk, the tables suddenly shifted. I was no longer this person that was nervous. I’m the expert in this. Nobody knows this project better than I do.”
But Joshua's path hasn't been without obstacles. Like many undergraduates entering the research world, he faced moments of self-doubt, questioning whether he belonged among more experienced scientists and whether his work would yield meaningful results. His approach to overcoming these challenges? Persistence, even—and especially—in the face of difficulties and fear.
“For a while, you may just have to do it scared,” Joshua said. “That’s one of the biggest things I’ve had to do—stop thinking of myself as just an undergraduate and think of myself as a potential scientist.”
Joshua recalled that, before he boarded his flight to the national conference at UCLA, professor Gray messaged him to express how proud he was of his diligence to be better.
“Mentoring is the strongest thing that has affected my time here,” Joshua said. “They pushed me to do something I didn’t know I could do.”
As he completes his final year, Joshua prepares himself for doctoral study, where he hopes to investigate medical sciences even further, especially molecular mechanisms of disease.
“I want to be someone that leads research efforts in medicine,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate enough to see exactly what that means. That’s something you have to commit to doing every single day, just getting a little bit better.”
Joshua graduates with a Bachelor of Science in nutrition from the College of Natural Sciences in May 2026.