The ASCLS Education and Research Fund Inc. has a significant impact on members’ professional growth as well as the advancement of the profession. The following testimonials share a few prespectives from past award and grant recipeints. Learn more about the ASCLS Education and Research Fund Inc.
“I am incredibly grateful and humbled to have received the ASCLS Education and Research Fund Scholarship! It has made my final year of CLS courses a reality. As I complete my final year of classes I am growing more excited about CLS as a career, and I look forward to becoming more involved with the national organization. I am an undergraduate at Idaho State University and I hope to enter graduate school next year in a related field. This scholarship has made it possible for me to consider furthering my education and I am extremely grateful for the support!”
— Katherine Eby, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2009 recipient
“I have been collecting sickle cell prevalence data in Haiti since 2002 and found the rate to be 15.1%. Of the 21 Haitian laboratories that I work with, few perform sickle cell testing. The majority that did test used methods and techniques that produced a high false negative rate. We have developed a modification of the hemoglobin solubility test (MHST) that can determine sickle cell zygosity that is simple, cheap and has a high sensitivity (90%) and specificity (94%) rate.
The ASCLS Education and Research grant has enabled us to purchase enough sickle cell test kits to place the MHST into three Haitian labs for a year in order to collect the final data necessary to determine test efficacy when performed by Haitian laboratorians. If the sensitivity and specificity is similar to the numbers we obtained, we plan to provide the MHST to all our Haitian lab partners and eventually make it available to her Haitian labs and possible African labs. The final phase of this project will be to obtain grant funding to develop and implement a full scale treatment program to patients testing positive for homozygous sickle cell disease beginning in one Haitian clinic and spreading to as many clinics as the funds allow.”
— Tim Randolph, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2009 recipient
“My research project Methicillin Resistant, Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA): Knowledge, Learning, and Adaptation, will be aided by the Education and Research grant funds. The chief goal of my research is to help build public health policy and models on how to deal with MRSA, its infections and other problems surrounding the condition. I want to help people be able to adapt to this disease. The grant money will be used for participant incentives, an audio recording device, transcription of audio recordings and any associated travel for collection and future dissemination of the research. I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who was involved in my selection.”
— Rodney Rohde, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2009 Grant-in-Aid recipient
“In conducting research regarding ASLCS member’s perceptions of the importance of research, I discovered that I was in need of a good statistical program. The purpose of the grant I submitted to the ASCLS Education and Research Fund was to fund the purchase of SPSS to provide a tool with which to analyze data and to pay for the costs associated with maintaining the survey tool that was stored on Survey Monkey.
“In addition, the statistical package purchased using ASCLS Education and Research grant monies will help me to be of use to ASCLS as the research task force moves forward on analyzing data obtained from its latest survey regarding research.”
— Lillian Mundt, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2009 recipient
“I am honored to be the recipient of an ASCLS Education and Research Fund award for my research project. Microbial biofilms have received recent attention due to an emerging awareness of biofilm effects on clinical infections. Of concern for the patient is the fact that 80% of chronic infections are biofilm-associated and are resilient to host defense mechanisms and antimicrobic treatment strategies. This funding will allow me to purchase reagents and supplies to identify, develop and validate an assay for biofilm quantitation that is simple, cost-effective, and reliable to perform. Once developed, the assay will be used for two purposes: (i) to identify whether clinical isolates of bacteria produce biofilm; and (ii) to screen and identify agents with antibiofilm properties. I thank the ASCLS for its support of this research.”
— Rita Heuertz, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2010 Grant-in-Aid recipient
“The ASCLS Education and Research Fund Grant-in-Aid Award will enable my research on Candida albicans to move in the direction of genomic analysis during biofilm formation. C. albicans has reached the status of a “pathogen of medical advancement” meaning as we treat patients with immunocompromising therapies we are seeing more infections with very high mortality rates once it reaches the bloodstream. One of the goals of this project is to identify virulence factors during biofilm growth. The grant money will aid in purchasing reagents and supplies to generate biofilms and isolate the RNA and DNA for genomic analysis. Thank you to all who were involved in process of awarding the grant, it is greatly appreciated.”
— April Harkins, ASCLS Education and Research Fund 2010 Grant-in-Aid recipient