Jay Turetzky has won the 2005 Spector Award.
The Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences awards this prize every year in memory of Marion Smith Spector, a 1938 graduate of the University who studied zoology under Professor Viktor Hamburger.
Hamburger was a prominent developmental biologist who made many important contributions while a faculty member here.
The Spector Prize was first awarded in 1974 to recognize academic excellence and outstanding undergraduate achievement in research. Students are nominated by their mentors.
Being nominated means they have done outstanding work in research that their mentors judge to be beyond what is typical for undergraduate students.
Turetzky’s thesis and research was judged to be the most outstanding among a group of six students and their research projects that were nominated this year.
He worked with Karen O’Malley, Ph.D., professor of neurobiology in the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the School of Medicine.
He is a co-author on two papers, and his thesis work, which he presented at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in fall 2004, is titled “A Temporal Ordering of Events in 6-OHAD-induced Dopaminergic Cell Death.”
Turetzky will enter a doctoral program in neurobiology in the fall.
As part of the departmental recognition of his work, he will present a research talk May 2 at a special biology department seminar, which will be followed by a reception.