The L’Oreal USA Fellowships For Women In Science Award ceremony will take place in the Kennedy Caucus room in Washington D.C. on September 15th to recognize five female scientists for breakthrough research. 

The 2011 Fellows were selected from a competitive pool of candidates by an interdisciplinary review panel and a distinguished jury of nine eminent scientists and engineers. The Fellows were selected based on several criteria, including exceptional academic records and intellectual merit, clearly-articulated research proposals with the potential for scientific advancement and outstanding letters of recommendation from advisers and overall excellence.  The peer-review process was managed by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dr. Trisha Andrew, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA – organic chemist in the field of organic electronics. During college, Dr. Andrew realized that she loved Organic Chemistry, both for the everyday routine of a synthetic organic chemist and for the ability to logically explain natural phenomena based on the chemical reactivity of molecules. The L’Oréal USA Fellowship For Women In Science award will help Dr. Andrew investigate the interaction of organic chromophores with interesting optoelectronic materials known as “quantum dots” and fabricate unique light-emitting diodes and solar cells from these composite materials.

Dr. Karlin Bark, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA – mechanical engineer in the field of haptics. The L’Oréal USA Fellowship For Women In Science award will allow Dr, Bark to study the potential use of haptic feedback in stroke rehabilitation. She will work alongside clinical specialists at the Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute to develop, refine, and test an affordable upper-limb rehabilitation system that can be used in clinics and homes to assist stroke survivors in retraining the motor pathways needed to complete everyday tasks. Additionally, athletic coaches, dance trainers, and motor skill education specialists could adopt this technology to help teach proper motions and skills with the aim of achieving better technique and preventing future injuries.

Dr. Sasha Devore, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY – neuroscientist examining health sciences and technology. With the support of the L’Oréal USA Fellowship For Women In Science award, Dr. Devore will employ techniques for selectively activating and recording from large ensembles of neurons in behaving animals in order to study the function of feedback pathways in sensory processing. Numerous neurological diseases and disorders are linked with dysfunction in the brain’s feedback pathways and are typically accompanied by impairments in sensory processing. Dr. Devore hopes that her experiments will lead to improved therapeutic interventions, in addition to providing important insight into the regulation of information processing in the brain.

Dr. R. Blythe Towal, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA – biomedical engineer in the field of computational neuroscience. With the support of the L’Oréal USA Fellowship For Women In Science award, Dr. Towal will design and build novel instruments to measure human eye movements during normal, active-sensing behavior as opposed to the highly artificial conditions of the laboratory. These instruments will enable her to measure where people look and determine how the properties of the environment are combined with the goals of the person to allow them to perceive their surroundings and select appropriate actions under natural conditions. Dr. Towal hopes that these experiments will lead not only to improved robotic technologies but also to a deeper understanding of information processing in the nervous system.

Dr. Tijana Ivanovic, Harvard Medical School, with work to be carried out at the University of Colorado at Boulder – virologist in the research field of virus entry into cells. The L’Oréal USA Fellowship For Women In Science award will enable Dr. Ivanovic to build a custom Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence (TIRF) microscope and use it to study the fusion mechanism of the influenza virus by visualizing the fusion process of individual virus particles in real time. The Fellowship will also fund additional equipment and reagents necessary to carry out experiments designed to address questions about fusion protein cooperativity during influenza membrane fusion.

In addition to awarding the grants, the L’Oréal USA Fellowships For Women In Science offers the Fellows professional development workshops, facilitated by the program’s partner, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and helps them build networks with accomplished female leaders in corporate, academic, governmental and scientific fields.

The L’Oréal USA Fellowships For Women In Science is a national extension of the global L’Oréal – UNESCO For Women in Science program which, since 1998, has recognized 67 Laureates, two of whom received the Nobel Prize in 2009. The program has also awarded 864 Fellowships which have been granted to young women scientists from 93 countries so that they can continue their research projects. The program has become a benchmark of scientific excellence on an international scale, revealing the contributions of these scientific women each year.

For more information, please visit www.lorealusa.com/forwomeninscience or the L’Oréal For Women in Science Facebook page.