<p>A L’Oreal USA Fellowship for Women in Science has been awarded to Florida State University alumna Laura Lapham, a postdoctoral research assistant and courtesy faculty member in FSU’s Department of Oceanography, and this year, one of just five young women scientists in the nation selected for the prestigious $40,000 prize.</p>
<p>The L’Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science program—administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—was launched in 2003 to help women in science achieve their goals by providing them with funding to help support 12 months of postdoctoral research. Highly competitive, the fellowships are bestowed each year on a small, elite group of researchers from the fields of mathematics, engineering, technology (including computer science), and the life and physical/material sciences.</p>
<p>For 2008, Lapham, 33, a native of Sarasota, Fla., was one of 196 applicants.</p>
<p>Those fellowships represent a much-needed investment. In the United States, women earn half of all science degrees and comprise half of the total workforce yet hold just 20 percent of the science jobs.</p>
<p>Lapham’s $40,000 award will underwrite new instrumentation essential to her geochemical research in the Gulf of Mexico on the formation and decomposition of deep-sea gas hydrates—ice-like crystalline formations containing methane gas within the ice lattice.</p>
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<p>After graduating from FSU in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry, Lapham earned her Ph.D. in Marine Sciences from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2007—where as it happens, her advisor was both an undergraduate and graduate alumnus of FSU. In April 2007 she returned to FSU as a “post-doc” in the oceanography department. There, she assists Professor Jeff Chanton, with his research while also pursuing her own, and helps train graduate students in the department’s laboratory.</p>
<p>It’s been a banner year for Lapham.</p>
<p>In addition to the $40,000 Women in Science fellowship she recently received, earlier this year the National Research Council (NRC) awarded her $50,000 in support of her research and also is providing the funding for her two-year courtesy faculty position at FSU.</p>
<p>For the complete article see: [FSU</a> News](<a href=“http://www.fsu.edu/news/2008/06/17/women.science/]FSU”>FSU News)</p>