Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History
Sauer, Anne
Branco, Jessica
Bennett, John
Crowley, Zachary
2000
Paula Frazier Poskitt Scholarship, 1995
The Paula Frazier Poskitt Scholarship was established in 1995 by Dr. Thomas R. Poskitt, A1966, M1970, in memory of his wife, Paula Frazier Poskitt, J1966, G1972, to provide tuition support for a senior biology major who intends to pursue graduate studies. | |
Paula K. Frazier Poskitt graduated magna cum laude in biology and received an M.A. in developmental biology from Harvard in 1968. While she was a graduate student she worked in the laboratory of Dr. Carroll Williams. She was awarded a Ph. D. from the department of Physiology at Tufts Medical School in 1971, and was accepted as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Microbiology at the University of Louisville from 1971-1974. During the period of her postdoctoral fellowship, she was the first to describe a tumor specific antigen in a nonviral induced animal malignancy and, in collaboration with her husband Thomas, A'66, M'70, characterized an immune complex mediated form of renal disease in the tumor-bearing animals. Subsequent to her postdoctoral fellowship she served on the faculties of Harvard Medical School, New Jersey College of Medicine, and East Tennessee State University, where she and her husband collaborated on numerous research projects in an attempt to delineate the immunologic relationship between tumors and their hosts. She ended her investigative career in 1988 as vice president for research at the Environmental Health Institute in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, an NIH-funded think tank devoted to issues of environmental carcinogens and their effects on the human genome. That same year, at the age of 43, she developed breast cancer and died six years later. The Paula Frazier Poskitt Scholarship in Biology was established by her husband to assist potential young investigators who, as determined by the Department of Biology, have shown uncommon aptitude in basic research and plan on entering graduate school to obtain a Ph. D. in any of the biological sciences. Paula Poskitt devoted her professional career to basic research, and that career was fostered at its inception at Tufts through scholarships and grants. That other future scientists can have that opportunity is the primary reason for the establishment of the Paula Frazier Poskitt Scholarship. | |
Source: BTU[Arts and Sciences/Engineering]; 100H | |
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