Elysia M. Alvarez '05: Award Winner
Elysia M. Alvarez, a Clark University senior from Fremont, CA, was awarded first place for her poster presentation "Computational Analyses of the Interaction of the Anthrax Lethal Factor Exotoxin with Peptide Substrate and with the Anthrax Protective Antigen" at the New England Science Symposium (NESS), on March 4 at Harvard Medical School.
Of the six awards given out at the symposium, Alvarez’s first-place honor, the Ruth and William Slien, M.D. Award, was the only one awarded to an undergraduate student. The award included a $300 prize.
Alvarez joined 51 other researchers presenting posters at the event. Twenty-one presenters were undergraduates and the rest were Ph.D. or M.D. candidates or post-doctoral students. "I was very impressed with the other conference attendees," she says. "It was a very diverse group of individuals, who were extremely intelligent and had accomplished so much in their research." She presented the research to two judges, a Ph.D. from Harvard University and a scientist from Genentech.
Alvarez derived the research through work with Clark University Chemistry Professor Don Nelson, which she began about a year ago. Professor Nelson describes Alvarez as a student with "motivation and drive." He said she has made a substantial contribution to his research efforts and calls her accomplishment "truly amazing" in light of the competing graduate students and postdoctoral research fellows.
Alvarez majors in biochemistry and molecular biology. She is the daughter of Manuel and Connie Alvarez, of Fremont. She is a 2001 graduate of Presentation High School, in San Jose.
