For some people it takes years or decades to determine what their calling is. For Providence College junior Gersham Rainone, it took 45 minutes.

Rainone, a Cranston West graduate and recent recipient of the Robert H. Walsh Student Research Fellowship, knew he wanted to be a doctor but had difficulty finding a concentration. That changed last summer when he shadowed a pediatric oncologist.

“I went in there thinking ‘Oh, my god, I’m going to be an emotional wreck when I’m in there,’” Rainone said during a May interview with the Herald. “I went in and I think within the first 45 minutes I was in there, I was like, ‘Wow. I could really see myself doing this.’ The experience that I had, it was incredible. I could really see myself doing that. All the chemistry I’m doing now could be helpful with the research that I would be able to do in medical school, because I would hopefully want to pursue oncology research.”

The fellowship, which includes a $4,000 stipend and $750 for supplies, will help Rainone purchase materials to continue the molecular research he’s been conducting for a year with associate chemistry professor Dr. Seann Mulcahy.

Dr. Mulcahy said Rainone’s case was a little unusual since he had never taken an organic chemistry class when they started working together during his freshman year.

He had little knowledge of theory or technique, but he has learned quickly.

“He was asking a lot of questions,” Dr. Mulcahy said. “It’s been going for a year and we’re starting to make some progress on it. It takes dedication, and now that he knows a little organic chemistry he’s able to apply some knowledge he’s learned to what he’s doing in the lab.”

Explaining their work is complicated. Dr. Mulcahy and Rainone are working on what the latter coined a “fluorination project.”

“Fluorine has these interesting properties, it’s really tiny,” Dr. Mulcahy said. “It is greasier, so it can allow molecules to pass through. The project he’s working on is trying to take small molecules and elaborate them into more complicated structures and what we are trying to do is incorporate a fluorine atom into the overall structure of the molecule.”

Rainone said that, while he was better at biology in high school, he decided to major in chemistry because he found it “much more interesting.” After working with Rainone, Dr. Mulcahy urged him to apply for the Walsh Fellowship to fund their work. Only 11 people received it, and he was one of them.

“I was really excited about that,” Rainone said of the fellowship. “It’s a lot of trial and error. We’re going to see what we see from this first reaction and build off that. So it took two and a half months to get the ball rolling and a couple months ago we had somewhat of a breakthrough, where we actually got what we wanted to get. Now we’re building different variants of what we wanted.”

Rainone spoke passionately and intricately about his work, and it is no wonder why knowing his inspiration. Rainone said his interest in helping others started when he was 7 years old, the time when his grandfather was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy. He said the condition, which leads to severe balance and walking issues, is essentially an accelerated form of Parkinson’s.

His grandfather was given only six months to live, but Rainone’s grandmother was able to keep him alive for seven years.

The best medicine was simple.

“Love and care,” Rainone said when asked how his grandmother did it. “The kind of care she gave for him was unlike anything any doctor could have given. That was my inspiration. Seeing her do that, it made me think, ‘Wow, if I could go and get a medical degree, and be as passionate as she was caring for him, I might be able to help people.’”

That’s been his focus ever since. Whether he was leafing through his Big Book of Science as a kid, absorbing as much as he could, or walking the hallways of the pediatric oncology ward, it’s always on his mind.

He shouldn’t have a problem adapting to the “team environment” of working with other doctors, either. After all, Rainone was a three-sport athlete at West, playing baseball, football and basketball. While it was a bit of a culture shock going from a jersey to a lab coat, Rainone said they have that teamwork factor in common.

“It was a big change going form sports being the center of my life to wanting to be a doctor,” Rainone said. “But they do have a lot of similarities. From what I’ve seen and what I’ve shadowed, everything is communication. Working as a team, that’s how you keep people alive.”

Once he graduates from P.C. in a couple of years, it’s on to medical school. He noted Brown and Harvard as top choices, but also listed Boston University, Tufts, Yale, Dartmouth, Stony Brook and Vanderbilt as other options.

No matter where he ends up, he is always driven by the same force.

“What keeps me going is just the idea that, if I become a doctor, even through the chemical research that I’m doing right now, maybe I could find something that can go into an antidepressant drug or something like that. I want to make a difference in someone’s life. The big thing for me is, I want to make a difference. I want to be someone people can look up to. ‘Oh, he’ll fix the problem. Oh, he can do this. He can do that.’ I want people to look at me like that.”