Allison Demas, a candidate for May graduation from Hamilton College, has been awarded a Fulbright Grant to Senegal. She will spend the 2007-08 academic year at the Universite Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, Senegal, where she will research antimalarial treatments in the lab of Dr. Daouda Ndiaye. Malaria is a deadly infectious disease estimated to kill up to three million people annually, with 90 percent of malaria cases occurring in Africa.
Demas spent last summer as a research intern at the New York State Department of Health. At Hamilton College she did biology research during the summer of 2005, and served as a teaching assistant for biology in 2004. Demas traveled to Belize for field study as part of a tropical field ecology course in 2005 and spent the spring 2006 semester studying in France.
While a student at Hamilton, Demas has been a volunteer tutor at the Mohawk Valley Resource Center for Refugees, a peer tutor in biology, a member of the Association of Women in Science and recipient of the Hamilton College Bristol Scholarship. She is a member of the Emerson Literary Society, the Womyn's Center, Hamilton College Democrats, Rainbow Alliance and was a contributing writer for the Spectator, Hamilton's student newspaper. She was selected for Hamilton Alumni Leadership Training, to represent Hamilton as a class and young alumni leader.
After completing her Fulbright travel, Demas plans to attend a graduate school of public health in biomedical research sciences, focusing on the genetics and epidemiology of infectious diseases.
The purpose of the Fulbright Program is to increase mutual understanding between the people of the United States and other countries through the exchange of persons, knowledge and skills. The program is designed to give recent college graduates opportunities for personal development and international experience.
It offers invaluable opportunities to meet and work with people of the host country, sharing daily life as well as professional and creative insights. The program promotes cross-cultural interaction and mutual understanding on a person-to-person basis in an atmosphere of openness, academic integrity and intellectual freedom. The primary source of funding for the Fulbright Program is an annual appropriation made by Congress to the Department of State. The U.S. Student Program awards approximately 900 grants annually and currently operates in more than 140 countries worldwide.
