Rosalind E. Franklin Science Achievement Graduate Scholarship in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Stephanie Collins, graduate student in the Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Molecular Biology program, is interested in understanding how microorganisms interact with human bodies to cause infections and change metabolism. She has published two first-authored papers and one co-authored paper in scientific journals. A reviewer of one paper said “she successfully developed new bacteriological culture models using her own ideas and critical thinking based upon her own results, intuition, background reading, and originality.” Collins completed a bachelor’s and a master’s degree with honors in biochemistry and cell biology at the University of Western Ontario in Canada.

The scholarship in biochemistry and molecular biology is named for Rosalind Franklin, who is best known for producing X-ray diffraction data that was instrumental in determining the structure of DNA. She also determined the molecular structure of many viruses, including the tobacco mosaic virus, which provided the foundation for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1982.