A chemistry professor at Illinois has been named one of the first recipients of an award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science to help early-career women launch their research.
Alison Fout will receive a $50,000 grant for receiving the Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Sciences. She will apply the grant toward her work in inorganic chemistry, with the project title for her award-winning research called “Nitrite Reduction in a Non-Heme System: Evidence for an Alternative Mechanism.”
Fout was one of four professors selected for the award. AAAS received 190 proposals from 123 colleges and universities from researchers seeking the grant.
“This prestigious award will not only allow my research group to further pursue the reduction of nitrite, an essential biological process for regulating blood pressure, but also provides additional leadership and mentoring opportunities for early-career female scientists,” Fout said.
Fout earned her doctoral degree in 2009 from Indiana University before working three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. She joined the Department of Chemistry at Illinois in 2012.
Women scientists and researchers continue to face obstacles in advancing their careers, representing 30 percent of principal investigators on research grants, according to the National Institutes of Health.
“Too often, those that distinguish themselves don’t advance at the same pace as men or receive the same recognition—an effect AAAS President Geraldine Richmond calls, ‘the polycarbonate ceiling,’” the organization stated in a release accompanying the announcement.
