Tuesday, November 7, 2006

Writer:  Rebecca Ayer, 706/583-0578, alea@uga.edu
Contact:  Harry Dailey, 706/542-5922, hdailey@uga.edu

ARCS Foundation scholarships fund nine UGA doctoral students, including six from Franklin College

Athens, Ga. – Nine doctoral students at the University of Georgia have received scholarships worth a total of $48,000 from the Atlanta chapter of the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists (ARCS®) Foundation for the 2006-07 academic year.

The students will be recognized for their studies in the biomedical and health sciences at an awards ceremony and luncheon in Atlanta on Nov. 16. The featured speaker will be Laura Holgate, Vice President for Russia/New Independent State Programs at the Nuclear Threat Initiative.

The ARCS Foundation was founded in Los Angeles in 1958 and is dedicated to helping meet the country’s needs for scientists and engineers by providing scholarships to academically outstanding university students. UGA recipients of the award are selected through the UGA Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute. This year’s ARCS scholars represent the UGA departments of foods and nutrition, genetics, kinesiology, microbiology, pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences, and psychology.

“We are grateful for the financial support that ARCS has provided to 32 UGA doctoral students in biomedical and health sciences since 2001, for a total of more than a quarter of a million dollars,” said UGA President Michael F. Adams. “Achieving excellence and successfully addressing society’s challenges require that we work in partnership, and the support that ARCS offers to students at UGA and other colleges and universities is a critical component of that partnership.”

The UGA ARCS Foundation Scholars and their interests are as follows:

* Christopher Black is pursuing a Ph.D. in kinesiology, focusing on skeletal muscle physiology and injury. In collaboration with the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, he is currently exploring how the use of exercise may improve the health of individuals with spinal cord injury.

* Kara Dyckman is a doctoral student in the Cognitive/Experimental Program in the UGA psychology department. She is using neuroimaging techniques to study changes in brain activity as participants practice motor tasks in order to aid in developing treatment programs for people with mental illness or brain injury.

* Sarah Eisenstein is a Ph.D. candidate in psychology in the UGA Clinical Psychology Program. She is using an animal model to examine the relationship between cannabinoids, the body’s own marijuana-like system, and psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia. With her work, she hopes to eventually facilitate the development of new drug therapies.

* Tannia Gutierrez is pursing her doctoral degree in psychology in the UGA Clinical Psychology Program. Currently, her doctoral work is focusing on how cannabinoids aid in suppressing some of the symptoms associated with pain induced by nerve injury.

* Benjamin Hasselbring is a Ph.D. candidate in microbiology. His doctoral research focuses on gliding motility of Mycoplasma pneumoniae, a bacterium that causes bronchitis and pneumonia in humans. Genetic and molecular characterization of the gliding machinery of this bacterium could provide possible vaccine targets against this chronic respiratory disease.

* Dawn Penn is pursuing a Ph.D. in foods and nutrition. She is a registered dietician and her doctoral research focuses on the role of leptin, a hormone produced by the fat cells in regulating fat cell growth using in vitro cell culture and models of genetic and diet induced obesity.

* Brianna Peterson has a background in forensic science and is pursing her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. She studies the abilities of the enzyme calcium-independent phospholipase A2 in mediating brain cell death caused by drugs of abuse, such as alcohol and cocaine.

* Rebecca Tomlinson is pursuing a Ph.D. in genetics, investigating the biogenesis and intracellular trafficking of the enzyme, telomerase. The enzyme is active in almost 90 percent of human cancers, making it a promising anti-cancer target.

* Laura Williams is pursuing a Ph.D. in microbiology. She is studying the distribution and diversity of plasmids in the foodborne pathogen, Salmonella enterica.  Plasmids are extrachromosomal DNA elements that play an important role in the spread of antibiotic resistance.

The Atlanta chapter of the ARCS Foundation funds scholarships for students at the University of Georgia, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology and Morehouse College. Now celebrating its 15th anniversary, the chapter has awarded close to $2 million since its founding. Additional information about the foundation can be found on the Web at www.arcsfoundation.org.

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