First recipient benefits from Bell travel award

Grant allowed student to present research in Florida

By Janice Paskey

It took a scientist to recognize an unmet need for aspiring student scientists. Graeme Bell, a leading medical researcher at the University of Chicago, and 1991 Distinguished Alumnus from the U of C, established two awards last May to allow students to travel to present their research.

The decision to invest in these awards came when his own sister reminded him that she would have loved to present her work at an overseas conference, but she couldn’t afford to.

As part of a $1.7 million gift this year, Bell endowed two $1,000 student travel awards for those in health related fields.

The first student to be granted the award is Giselle DeVetten, a Bachelor of Health Sciences student with a biomedical major. Last May, she traveled to the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to present her research on myopia.

“I was ecstatic,” she says, “Being an undergraduate student and having the opportunity to present my research findings at an international research conference was a huge accomplishment.” Some 10,200 researchers attended.

Myopia is the condition in which the eye is too long and incoming light rays are focused in front of the retina, causing blurred images. Scientists believe that understanding more about eye growth might contribute to new treatments for myopia.

“What researchers do know, however, is that the retina is responsible for regulating the growth of the eye, and ongoing research is being performed to learn which retinal cells and neural circuits are responsible for regulating eye growth,” DeVetten says.

She conducted research into myopia after her first year, under the supervision of Dr. Bill Stell, a professor in the Faculty of Medicine. When she received the Bell travel grant, Stell contributed the balance of her travel expenses for the Florida conference.

“Attending an international scientific meeting to present a paper or poster is a very prestigious event in the life of a young scientist,” says Stell. “It looks good on one’s resume, is definitely helpful in boosting one’s career (prospects of getting into a top graduate program, for example), and is a powerful motivator for high accomplishment in research.”

Stell says student travel awards are an incentive for research supervisors to give their undergraduates this kind of opportunity. A four-to-five day conference almost anywhere in the U.S.A. costs about $1,500 per person, for meeting registration, travel, room and board.