Washington, DC—May 28, 2008—A 2008 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) Raymond W. Sarber Award is being presented to Katharine R. Clapham, Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This award recognizes students at the undergraduate and predoctoral levels for research excellence and potential.
Ms. Clapham, currently a senior at Harvard College, is a student researcher in the laboratory of Richard Losick, where she has been studying Bacillus subtilis since her freshman year. In 2006, she was co-author of a publication in Molecular Microbiology about the localization of the protein SpoVM, an unusually small peptide during the developmental process of spore formulation. Ms. Clapham is currently taking a genetic approach to gather more information about the function of SpoVM. In the summer and fall of 2006, she worked in the laboratory of Diego de Mendoza, an International Scholar of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, in Rosario, Argentina, where she carried out research on genes involved in lipid catabolism during sporulation in B. subtilis. This research was funded by the Herchel Smith Harvard Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship. In 2007, Ms. Clapham was awarded a Microbial Sciences Initiative Undergraduate Research Fellowship to support her thesis research. Currently, she is taking a genetic approach to gather more information about the function of SpoVM.
The Raymond W. Sarber Award will be presented during the 108th General Meeting of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM), June 1 – June 5, 2008 in Boston, Massachusetts. ASM is the world's oldest and largest life science organization and has more than 43,000 members worldwide. ASM's mission is to advance the microbiological sciences and promote the use of scientific knowledge for improved health and economic and environmental well-being.