American Physiological Society Names Two Minority Outreach Fellows For 2007

The American Physiological Society (APS; www.the-APS.org) announced today that it has awarded its 2007 Minority Outreach Fellowships to Jessica Clark and Clintoria Richards-Williams. The women were selected from among three applicants for the highly competitive award. This is the second year the award has been made.

Dr. Clark, an Asian/Pacific Islander raised in Tucson, AZ, is a first year postdoctoral trainee in the Department of Surgery at the University of Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo. There she is studying the role of intestinal epithelium in the pathogenesis of sepsis, a disease which afflicts 750,000 Americans each year and kills up to 30 percent of those affected. She plans to continue in academia pursuing research relating to the physiology of the gastrointestinal tract. Dr. Clark is a graduate of the University of Arizona and a past winner of the APS’ graduate Porter Physiology Fellowship Award.

Mrs. Richards-Williams, an African-American, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her research investigates ATP and zinc modulation of insulin secretion in diabetes. Diabetes currently affects 20.8 million children and adults in America and is the 6th leading cause of death. She is a co-author on a published article and several posters and oral presentations. As a four year Dean’s list graduate of Clark Atlanta University, she has received numerous academic awards for her scientific work. Her work has merited a Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Grant, Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA Pre-doctoral Fellowship and she has received the APS’ graduate Porter Physiology Fellowship Award.

Education and Role Modeling for Young Minorities in Science

As APS K-12 Minority Outreach Fellows, the women will visit K-12 classrooms to talk about their career paths and to serve as role models for other minority students. In addition the Fellows will:

serve as a Physiologist-in-Residence at the APS Science Teaching Forum, a week of hands-on science training for middle school and high school teachers.

visit K-12 minority student classrooms (in their home towns during the 2007-2008 school year) to deliver career presentations and lead hands-on physiology activities for the students. They will also encourage pre-college minority students who are underrepresented in science – African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics and Pacific Islanders – to think about becoming biomedical researchers.

represent the APS at the national Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS), a national conference designed to facilitate increased minority involvement in biomedical and behavioral science careers and present cash awards to undergraduate students for best oral and poster presentations in the physiological sciences during the conference.

conduct outreach activities for high school teachers and students at the APS annual meeting, held as part of the Experimental Biology 2007 (EB ’07) conference and

reach out to a local school near their institution to participate in PhUn (Physiology Understanding) Week (program details at http://www.phunweek.org.

The fellowship pays a variety of conference registration fees and travel expenses for these and other events.

Marsha Lakes Matyas, Ph.D., the APS director of education, said “In just the second year of the Minority Outreach Fellowship, I am delighted that we have identified two such outstanding young scientists to carry the message about science and academic accomplishments to the next generation. On behalf of everyone at the APS, we congratulate both of these exceptionally talented women as this year’s Fellows.”