Dr. Mary Schweitzer (photo: Roger Winstead)

Schweitzer Receives Packard Foundation Fellowship

Mary Higby Schweitzer, assistant professor in the Department of Marine, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has been awarded a five-year, $625,000 fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Schweitzer was one of 20 researchers nationwide to receive Packard Foundation fellowships this year. The Packard Foundation
administers one of the nation’s largest nongovernmental programs of unrestricted grants to faculty members in science and engineering. Each year, the Foundation invites only 50 universities to submit two nominations for consideration.

Schweitzer, whose discovery of soft tissue in fossilized dinosaur bone was cited by Discover magazine as the # 6 science story of 2005, will use the grant to further her research into the biogeochemical interactions that lead to fossil preservation. Schweitzer holds a joint appointment at the N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences as curator of vertebrate paleontology. She recently taped an episode of the Public Broadcasting System’s prestigious science program, Nova. No air date was available at press time. (Source:Scope Magazine, NCSU)

More info in Smithsonian Magazine...