2019: Brad Rhew
Cook Literacy Model School, Winston-Salem Forsyth County Schools
After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2010 with a Bachelor of Education degree in Middle Grades Education with concentrations in science and social studies, Brad spent his first six years teaching at Walkertown Middle School in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System. His performance was recognized with the Promise Award, a prestigious award given to teachers showing great potential, responsibility, ingenuity, and innovation in their first year of teaching within the county. In 2014… Read More
2019: Casandra Cherry
Phillips Middle, Edgecombe County Schools
My philosophy as an educator is that I strive to find the abilities in all children I teach, and empower them to believe in those abilities and be the best people they can be. My goal as an educator is to prepare students globally, instill a growth mindset, and foster an appreciation for math and science. I attended Elizabeth City State University and graduated with honors –Cum Laude in May of 1997 with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology-Social Work. Upon graduating I worked as a high risk social worker level one with parents and children at Tideland Mental Health in Beaufort, County NC… Read More
2019: Renata Crawley
West Marion Elementary School, McDowell County Schools
Mrs. Renata Crawley has been a teacher at West Marion Elementary School located in McDowell County for the past 28 years. Renata grew up in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains where a love of nature was instilled in her at a young age. Hours were spent hiking mountain trails and fishing with her father on Lake James. Renata has always believed that children become most excited when time is spent outdoors. For the past ten years, Renata has been the director of after school science clubs, Project Wild Thing, an outdoor program… Read More
2019: Sallie Senseney
Mountain Heritage High School, Yancey County Schools
Sallie Senseney has taught Biology, AP Biology, and Earth Science at Mountain Heritage High School since 2010. She returned to MHHS, her home high school, after earning an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At UNC, she was a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Scholar in the UNC-BEST program. She earned her National Board Certification in 2014 and a master’s degree in biology from Clemson University in 2017… Read More
2019: Beverly Owens
Mrs. Beverly Owens is an 8th grade science teacher at Kings Mountain Middle School in Cleveland County. She also teaches online Earth and Environmental Science, and coaches her school’s Science Olympiad team. Owens works closely with her Professional Learning Community, the “Science Squad,” and they implement a unique model of science-inclusive blended learning in their classes. Mrs. Owens has more than 15 years experience as an educator. In addition to working as a classroom teacher, she has been a part-time Program Specialist at the Schiele Museum of Natural History for 13 years… Read More
Career Awards at the Scientific Interface
2019: FOCUS in Sound – 21
Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood… Read More
2018: Markita Landry, PhD
TRANSCRIPT: I’m Markita Landry, I’m an assistant professor in the department of chemical and biomolecular engineering at UC Berkeley. I study how nanoparticles can be functionalized synthetically to be useful for biological applications ranging from imaging to gene editing… Read More
2016: FOCUS in Sound – 27
Welcome to FOCUS In Sound, the podcast series from the FOCUS newsletter published by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund. I’m your host, science writer Ernie Hood… Read More
Career Awards for Medical Scientists
2018: Alice Chen-Plotkin, MD
As a physician-scientist and a research team leader Alice Chen-Plotkin finds herself at home in numerous overlapping worlds. For many diseases and disorders nowadays, there are plenty of association studies—that is, evidence of some relation between a portion of the genome and a physiological trait. Figuring out exactly how the two are related, however, poses more of a challenge. It’s the rare research team that has the opportunity… Read More
Postdoctoral Enrichment Program
2018: Ishmail Abdus-Saboor, PhD
When Ishmail Abdus-Saboor was 14, he turned the third floor of his parents’ Philadelphia home into his personal laboratory. There in Germantown, he carefully tended to his experimental subjects, hundreds of freshwater crayfish, which he kept in dozens of shoebox-sized plastic containers. He clipped off various appendages of the unlucky crustaceans, then plied them with ginseng to see if the popular herbal remedy helped them regenerate their lost limbs or claws faster… Read More
