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Andrew Pace Wins Prestigious Beckman Scholarship
Occidental College junior Andrew Pace of Fort Lewis, Wash., has been awarded a Beckman Scholars Program award, one of the country’s most prestigious undergraduate research scholarships.
Pace, a chemistry major, will receive a $14,600 stipend and a $3,000 expense account to conduct his research project, titled “Drugs, Mirrors and You: A New Wave in Pharmaceuticals.” He will study the synthesis of pharmaceutically important molecules. “These, in turn, could be used to improve upon current antibiotics and antidepressants, like anisomycin and Prozac,” he said, noting that “I have a passion for research, synthesis and impacting people’s lives in a positive manner.”
Pace will conduct his research during the 2004-05 academic year and during the summers preceding and following the school year. He will work under the supervision of Donald Deardorff, the Carl F. Braun Professor of Chemistry at Occidental.
Pace is among more than 400 outstanding undergraduates from 61 top American colleges and universities to receive the award since the Irvine-based Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation started the scholars program in 1997. He is the eighth Occidental student chosen for the honor.
The college’s Undergraduate Research Program – recipient of a 1998 National Science Foundation Integration of Research and Education Award – was cited as one of the country’s best in a 2001 study of undergraduate research sponsored by a consortium of private foundations.
The Beckman prize is only the latest recognition of Pace’s scientific promise. In 2003 he won a $15,000 Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, given to students interested in careers in math, science, engineering, and computer disciplines. Pace intends to work in research and development for a pharmaceutical company.
The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation makes grants to non-profit research institutions to promote research in chemistry and the life sciences, and particularly to foster the invention of methods, instruments, and materials that will open up new avenues of research in science. Since it was established in 1977, it has contributed about $350 million to the advancement of scientific research, primarily in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry and medicine.