MATHEMATICAL BIOLOGIST RECEIVES
TOP AWARD OF INAUGURAL
$100,000 PRIZE FOR PROMISE
The Prize for Promise is an Award Given to Young Women Demonstrating
Exceptional Ability, Leadership, and Vision in their Respective Endeavors |
| WASHINGTON, DC, December 3, 2002 - With the goal of helping to support and nurture the next generation of leaders, scholars, and visionaries, the Student Achievement & Advocacy Services today announced it has bestowed its first "Prize for Promise,” a $100,000 award that recognizes young women of exceptional ability, ambition, boldness, brilliance, and dedication within their field of expertise. |
| The winner, Dr. Natalia Komarova, is a native of Russia and currently a mathematics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University in New Jersey. She was selected for her extraordinary potential and contribution to her field, her expertise in other science disciplines, and her collaboration with colleagues on numerous continents. Only 30 years old, Komarova already is considered a leader in the field of mathematical biology, currently focusing her study on the modeling of cancer and virus dynamics. She will receive $90,000 of the overall award. |  |
 | The first runner-up, Dr. Agata Smogorzewska, is currently in the Tri-Institutional MD/PhD program of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University, Sloan-Kettering Institute, and the Rockefeller University. She will receive $10,000. |
| "Dr. Komarova may be the top young mathematician in the field of theoretical biology, and her compelling research and academic contributions made her a clear choice from what was a highly exceptional field of young achievers,” said Dr. Murray Gell-Mann, a winner of the Nobel Prize in physics and a founding board member of the Prize for Promise. "Her efforts in researching the genetic instability in cancer initiation is a radical departure from traditional oncology research and may play a significant role in understanding the catalysts behind cancer.” |
| The Prize for Promise, to be awarded bi-annually, is judged by a committee of leaders from the fields of art, science, medicine, literature, and industry, including Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners, and world-renowned technology innovators. Finalists are nominated by prestigious academics and other world leaders based on criteria crafted by the committee. The $100,000 scholarship is given to a young woman, age 21-35, of great promise who could, given the proper support, become a world leader in her respective field. The monetary award does not have to be used for a specific purpose, although the winners are chosen with the hope that they will voluntarily work with Student Achievement & Advocacy Services to mentor future generations of women.
| | "The Prize for Promise was founded on the belief that our world is changed and improved by a few individuals of amazing ability,” said Victoria Gray, President of the Student Achievement & Advocacy Services. "This year's winners already are contributing to the overall understanding of cell activity, how this activity impacts various cancers and other human diseases, and hopefully will lead to discoveries that will help find cures.” |
| Dr. Komarova graduated from Moscow State University in 1993 with a "Red Diploma,” the highest academic honor awarded and an accomplishment achieved by fewer than one percent of graduates there. After receiving this distinction for her undergraduate work, she came to the United States to pursue her M.S. and Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from the University of Arizona, Tucson. |
| In 1998 she was awarded a Research Fellowship at the Mathematics Institute at the University of Warwick in England. She has written extensively on mathematical modeling of learning and evolution of language. Komarova presently is a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago and is a Lecturer in Applied Mathematics at the University of Leeds in England. She has also published papers on non-linear waves and pattern formation where her study of phenomena such as tidal sand waves and lasers led to practical applications for laying underwater cable and building artificial islands. She has been published in dozens of academic and scientific journals, most recently completing a chapter on language learning for the soon to be released book Language Evolution: The States of the Art, which is being published by Oxford University Press. |
| "A prize to help genuinely worthy young women is a splendid concept that is long overdue and greatly desired,” said Dr. Lynn Margulis, a National Medal of Science Winner and a professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. "The Prize for Promise provides true vision in its goal and, from this year's selection, clearly is focused on substance much like the great awards such as the MacArthur, the Nobel, and the Fields Medal.” |
| Dr. Smogorzewska, who is also 30, was sited by the awards committee for her extraordinary work in the study of cell components known as telomeres, in an effort to understand why older cells fail to reproduce. Her work recently has been published in prestigious journals including Nature Genetics and Cell and she has just completed her Ph.D. in the lab of Dr. Titia de Lange at Rockefeller University, where she will continue as a resident in Clinical Pathology and a postdoctoral fellow studying cancer. Dr. Smogorzewska emigrated from Poland and studied Biology and Chemistry at the University of Southern California, where she graduated magna cum laude with a degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry. She immediately was accepted into the prestigious tri-institutional program at Rockefeller where she was recently awarded the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recognizing outstanding achievement in graduate studies. |
| "From the dozens of extraordinarily qualified nominees, the winners already have created a legacy of intellectual achievement and demonstrated not just promise, but a personal conviction to fundamentally changing the world through their efforts,” said Rita Dove, a former US poet laureate, 1987 Pulitzer Prize winner for poetry, and member of the Prize for Promise advisory committee. |
| About Student Achievement & Advocacy Services |
| Student Achievement & Advocacy Services is dedicated to helping promising students maximize their potential by providing an integrated system of programs that provide advocacy, guidance, mentoring, and scholarships. Their goal, with a special focus on at risk-youth, is to help students make the transition to a contented and productive adulthood. |
Other Student Achievement Programs:
- Achievement Advocate. An online mentoring program www.achievementadvocate.org for promising 4th-8th graders that brings together the nurture and support of a caring adult mentor with interactive content that focuses on thinking, organizational, career, and character skills.
- Achievement Prizes for Student Writing. These writing prizes, for students in grades 7-12 are among the largest in the United States and include a $10,000 Prize for Fiction, and a $5,000 Prize for Poetry. A highly distinguished panel of authors, including Pulitzer Prize winners and former Poet Laureates, serve as a jury for the prizes.
| | For more information on Achievement Advocate &Advocacy Services please visit our website at www.achievementadvocate.org. |
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