Grants or Gifts Relating to Women in Higher Education

Here is this week’s news of grants and gifts that may be of particular interest to women in higher education.

Susan Meschwitz, professor of chemistry at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island, has been awarded a $387,466 grant from the National Institute of Health to research how to better understand and treat recurring urinary tract infections in women. The funding will support Dr. Meschwitz’s biomedical research, as well as provide support to help train undergraduate students in her lab.

Rice University in Houston, Texas, has received a $200,000 donation from Neal Lane and the Lane family to establish the Joni Sue Lane Rice University Lecture on Women in Science and Technology at the Baker Institute for Public Policy. The endowment aims to bring attention to the contributions of women in STEM through events at the Baker Institute, as well as provide research opportunities to scholars, policymakers, and industry leaders. Neal Lane is the Malcom Gillis University Professor Emeritus at Rice. His late wife, Joni Sue Lane, was a longtime computer scientist with the university’s Institute for Computer Services and Applications.

Scripps College, a women’s college in Claremont, California, has received a $3 million gift from the John Stauffer Charitable Trust to establish an endowed professorship dedicated to the intersection of chemistry and art conservation. Housed within the department of natural sciences, the interdisciplinary professorship will draw from art, humanities, and science fields to support Scripps’ undergraduate art conservation education.

Alicja Copik and Debbie Altomare, professors in the College of Medicine at the University of Central Florida, have each received a $100,000 grant from the Florida Breast Cancer Foundation to develop new methods to diagnose and treat breast cancer. Dr. Copik’s research focuses on better arming the body’s natural killer cells. Dr. Altomare’s research centers around the cellular pathways that can signal cancer cells to grow or help immunity cells fight the disease.