Research Corporation, the only U.S. philanthropic
foundation wholly dedicated to the advancement of science and technology,
has just awarded Dr. Patricia Bossart-Whitaker, Assistant Professor of
Chemistry at Winthrop University, a two year Cottrell College Research
Award for initiating the three-dimensional molecular structure determination
of a biomedically important protein using novel X-ray diffraction techniques.
Undergraduate chemistry and biology students are intimately involved in
all aspects of the project. Outside collaborators include researchers at
the Medical University of South Carolina and Yale University Medical School.
Research
Corporation was established in 1912 by Frederick Gardner Cottrell,
a young university professor turned philanthropist who endowed it with
patent rights to his valuable invention: the electrostatic precipitator
for controlling industrial air pollution. Research Corporation supports
research in physics, chemistry, and astronomy at U.S. and Canadian colleges
and universities.
The foundation makes between 200 and
300 awards annually totaling $5 to $7 million under a number of programs
that encourage beginning faculty members, original ideas, and the involvement
of students in scientific investigations. The foundation's programs have
aided early inquiries by roughly 15,000 scientists, 27 of whom have won
Nobel Prizes. Hundreds of other grantees have received the awards of the
American Chemical or Physical Societies, and are members of such bodies
as the National Academy of Sciences.
For this year's Cottrell College Science
program, there were over 175 proposals submitted and approximately 50 awards
are being made. Dr. Bossart-Whitaker's research was one of the few
awards given to a "first-time" submission.
Cottrell Research grants are extremely
competitive awards given to faculty at some of the finest non-Ph.D. granting
Universities in the U.S. and Canada. Among last year's recipients
were faculty from Amherst College, Barnard College, Bucknell University,
Carleton College, College of the Holy Cross, College of William and Mary,
Davidson College, Fordham University, Furman University, Haverford College,
Hope College, James Madison University, John Carroll University, Mount
Holyoke College, Occidental College, Otterbein College, Smith College,
Stetson University, United States Air Force Academy, University of North
Carolina at Charlotte, University of Winnipeg, Whitman College, Williams
College, and Xavier University.