Luxembourgish philanthropist supports students
For the second time, the "Fondation du Pélican de Mie et Pierre Hippert-Faber under the aegis of the Fondation de Luxembourg" awarded scholarships to three graduate students from the Doctoral School for Systems and Molecular Biomedicine at the University of Luxembourg.
The scholarships amount to €20,000 per student, and should be spent by the end of their graduate degree.
The deserving students who received the scholarships this time are Komal Baig from Luxembourg, Audrey Gustin from Belgium and Aravind Tallam from India. Gustin and Baig both carry out their thesis work at the University’s Life Sciences Research Unit (LSRU), in the research groups for neuroinflammation and molecular disease mechanisms respectively. Tallam is a graduate student at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), which is one of the university’s two research centres.
The scholarships shall be used for expenses, such as costs for additional experiments as well as travel expenses to conferences and training workshops.
“It means a lot to me to receive such a prestigious award,” says Tallam. “I am hoping to use some of the funds to visit the lab of Dr. Jeff Ranish at the Institute for Systems Biology (ISB) in Seattle. There, I will learn state-of-the-art techniques for the isolation of protein-DNA complexes. I am going to apply these new methods to identify transcription factor complexes responsible for the activation of IRG1, a protein thought to play a role in Parkinson’s Disease”, Tallam adds.
The "Fondation du Pélican” was founded by Pierre Hippert and is managed by the Fondation de Luxembourg. The two parties are collaborating closely with the Doctoral School of Systems and Molecular Biomedicine to identify the projects to be funded. The two main objectives of Pierre Hippert’s foundation are to participate in the financing of Luxembourg-based research projects in biomedicine or biotechnology and to provide financial support to Luxembourgish institutions engaged in the field of arts and letters. “Most people in Luxembourg, who give money to charities, support projects in third world countries. I believe that it is extremely important to also support projects within our own country, such as the University of Luxembourg”, says philanthropist Pierre Hippert.
