Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Top science award goes to Tech grad
Have you heard?
JoAnne Poindexter
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A former Roanoker who thinks viruses "are amazing" has been recognized as one of the top young scientists in the county.
Felicia Dare Goodrum, a graduate of Patrick Henry High School and Virginia Tech, is one of the 100 beginning researchers who will receive Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers in the fall at a White House ceremony.
A year ago, Goodrum earned several other awards, including being named one of 20 Pew Charitable Trust scholars.
As a Pew scholar, Goodrum, 39, received a $240,000 award over a four-year period to help support her research.
President Obama recently announced the names of the recipients of the presidential awards, the highest honor bestowed by the U.S. government on young professionals in the early stages of their research careers.
Goodrum, the daughter of June Wall Camper and Felix Goodrum, both of Roanoke, is a virologist.
She studies human cytomegalovirus, or CMV, one of the nine human herpes viruses.
"Viruses are amazing," Goodrum wrote in an e-mail. "They can manipulate almost every aspect of our biology. Most viruses that infect us, cause self-limiting disease -- they run their course and are cleared."
Goodrum said that CMV, like all herpes viruses, is different -- "once you are infected, you carry the virus forever."
"This coexistence with us fascinates me and how the virus is able to coexist in our cells is a huge biological challenge," Goodrum wrote.
Goodrum earned a Bachelor of Science in biology at Tech and a doctorate in molecular genetics at Wake Forest University. She did postdoctoral training at Princeton University.
Goodrum has always been interested in science. But she went to Tech originally aiming to be a veterinarian, said her mother.
"Dare had such good, strong science teachers who made it so interesting for her," Camper said.
President Clinton established the awards in February 1996. Recipients are selected on the basis of two criteria: pursuit of innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology, and a commitment to community service.
Since 2006, Goodrum has been an assistant professor and an assistant research scientist in the College of Medicine at the University of Arizona. She also has earned numerous science awards since 2000 and grants for her research.
