Stony Brook Graduate Student, Noelle Cutter, Wins Chasman Scholarship at the Brookhaven National Laboratory.

................................................................................................................................................................................ UPTON, NY – Noelle Cutter, PhD student in the Department of Genetics at Stony Brook University, won the 2006 Renate W. Chasman Scholarship for Women, which is off ered annually to encourage women to pursue careers in science, engineering or mathematics.

Valued at $2,000, the scholarship is awarded to a woman who has returned to pursue a degree on a part-time or full-time basis after her college education was interrupted. It is named after the late Renate Chasman, a renowned physicist who worked at Brookhaven. The scholarship is awarded by the Brookhaven Women in Science, a not-for-profit Courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratoryorganization at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The Brookhaven National Laboratory is one of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). It is operated for the DOE by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by the Stony Brook Research Foundation. Brookhaven conducts research in the Physical, Biomedical, and Environmental Sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security.

Under the guidance of Senior Scientist Betsy Sutherland, Cutter has been working on research related to DNA damage and repair in higher organisms. Cutter researched at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory, a facility that simulates the cosmic and solar radiation environment found in space, in order to assess radiation risks to astronauts. The research carried out is important to enable the design of adequate preventive measures for long space missions.

“As an undergraduate, I was a pre-med major at first, but then I became interested in research, so I decided to work in that area to see if it suited me,” Cutter said. “That’s when I was fortunate enough to get the position at Brookhaven, which helped me tremendously in focusing on a new direction.”

Before coming to Stony Brook this past September, Cutter earned a B.S. in biology from Molloy College in Rockville Center in 2003, and worked as a biology associate at the Brookhaven Lab from 2004 to 2006. She hopes to earn her Ph.D. in genetics in 2011, and to work in academia, teaching and pursuing research in her field.

Picture Courtesy of Brookhaven National Laboratory - Winner Noelle Cutter (center), and Brookhaven Women in Science members on the scholarship committee (from left): Kathleen Barkigia, Vinita Ghosh, Aimee Sumereau, and Loralie Smart.