Etcetera

Office of Philanthropy Announces New Awards
The Scripps Research Institute Office of Philanthropy announces several new grants resulting from its Foundations and Corporate Relations program:

• Assistant Professor Ian MacRae will receive a Blasker Young Investigator Award through the San Diego Foundation to support his project, "Delivery of Double Stranded RNA to Human Cells: Probing the Mechanism of SID-1."
• Research Associate Beth Rasala of the Mayfield lab will receive a Blasker Postdoctoral Award through the San Diego Foundation to support her project, "Development of a Regulated Expression System in Microalgae for the Production of Biofuels."
• The Pearson Center for Alcoholism and Addiction Research will receive a grant from Diane Heath Beever Endowment Fund, a charitable remainder trust.

In addition, the Stillman Family Foundation granted an unrestricted award to The Scripps Research Institute.

Johanna Heideker Receives Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds Fellowship
Johanna Heideker, a Kellogg School of Science and Technology Ph.D. candidate working in the Boddy lab, has received a fellowship from the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds Foundation for Basic Research in Medicine. According to the organization, these fellowships go to "outstanding young scientists who wish to pursue an ambitious Ph.D. project of approximately three years in basic biomedical research in an internationally leading laboratory." The fellowship, which is open to graduate students from around the world, is awarded to fewer than ten percent of all applicants. Heideker's research focuses on the regulation of sumoylation and its role in genome maintenance and repair.

Amanda Blasius Wins Cancer Research Institute Support
Research Associate Amanda L. Blasius of the Bruce Beutler lab has been selected to receive an award from the Cancer Research Institute through the organization's Irvington Institute Fellowship Program. The fellowship will support Blasius's work identifying and characterizing novel genes in a unique pathway that fight viral infection with signaling proteins called type I interferons.

Jonathan Hollander Wins Young Investigator Travel Award
Research Associate Jonathan Hollander of the Kenny lab has won an American College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ACNP) Young Investigator Travel Award. The award will support Hollander's participation in the ACNP's 2008 Annual Meeting, to be held in Scottsdale, Arizona, December 7 -11. Hollander's presentation will focus on defining the role of orexin-1 receptors in nicotine reinforcement.

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