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Release: April 17, 1995
Contact: Caroline Moseley (609/258-5725)


Princeton Seniors Win Labouisse Fellowship
For Research in Developing Countries

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Two Princeton University seniors have been
awarded the 1995 Henry Richardson Labouisse Prize Fellowship:
Kristin Chrouser of Longview, Texas, who is majoring in ecology
and evolutionary biology, and Julie Simpson, of Nyack, N.Y., a
molecular biology major.

Chrouser will spend a year in Uganda, working to establish a
health education program for women, with special focus on malaria.
She hopes to "use the resources of modern medicine not only to
treat the diseased but to teach patients how to avoid sickness in
the first place." She points out that many cases of malaria could
be prevented with use of "bed nets, insecticides and long sleeves
worn at night."

She will target women because "they are educationally
disadvantaged relative to men, yet are responsible for the health
of their families." As most of the village women are illiterate,
she will use "a pictorial presentation" and native translators.

At the conclusion of her fellowship, Chrouser will attend Mayo
Medical School in Rochester, Minn.

At Princeton, she is a member of the Roaring 20, an
a cappella singing group, and the Princeton Evangelical
Fellowship. She also serves on the Princeton community's First Aid
and Rescue Squad.

Simpson will work in a laboratory at the University of Costa Rica
in San Jos , studying a virus that attacks the country's rice
crop. The RHBV, or rice hoja blanca [white leaf] virus, lives in
the grasslands around rice fields, she explains, and is
transported by an insect called a leaf-hopper. Part of Siimpson's
work will be to establish if the virus can most effectively be
fought in the grass, in the insect or in the rice itself.

"The same rice grows all over Latin America," she says, "so if we
could beat the virus we could improve crops over a large area." In
addition, the rice virus is similar to a maize virus and a wheat
virus that also afflict local agriculture. "If we could find an
approach that worked on rice, it would rapidly translate to other
crops," she points out.

Simpson looks forward to using molecular biology "in the
developing world, where they need this technology."

A member of Princeton's Tae Kwon Do team, Simpson has earned a red
belt. After her fellowship year, she plans to pursue graduate
study in molecular biology.

The Labouisse fellowship supports research work in developing
countries. It honors Henry Richardson Labouisse, a 1926 Princeton
graduate who held posts in the State Department and United Nations
for nearly 40 years, serving as head of UNICEF from 1965 to 1979.

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