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Haley Hill Wins Beckman Scholarship
Occidental College junior biochemistry major Haley Hill of Issaquah, Wash., has been awarded a Beckman Scholars Program award, one of the country’s most prestigious undergraduate research scholarships.
Hill will receive a $14,600 stipend and a $3,000 expense account to conduct research into the electrical properties of DNA. She will study how well DNA works as a “wire” in detecting disease and other mutations. Hill’s research, which she will conduct during the 2003-04 academic year and during the summers preceding and following the school year, could have broad implications in cancer prevention and treatment.
“To receive a Beckman Fellowship is one of the highest honors an undergraduate researcher can receive, and I am truly honored to have been selected to represent Occidental College,” said Hill, who plans to obtain a doctoral degree in biochemistry or chemistry. “This fellowship will allow me to devote more time and energy to increasing my understanding of and contribution to the scientific community.”
“Haley is tremendously organized and focused in whatever she undertakes,” said Reef Hardy, adjunct research professor of chemistry. “Given her intellectual prowess, her enthusiasm about her project, and the agility with which she learns and applies new information, I expect her to make a significant contribution in her work at Occidental as well as in graduate school.”
Hill is among more than 330 outstanding undergraduates from 68 top American colleges and universities to receive the award since the Irvine-based Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation started the scholars program in 1997. Hill is the seventh Occidental student chosen for the honor.
Occidental’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 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.