Fidel Desir is the winner of the 2010 Stalker Award.
The prize is named in the honor of the late Harrison D. Stalker, PhD, who was professor of biology in Arts & Sciences; a leading evolutionary biologist, geneticist and inspired teacher; and a true enthusiast of the fine arts.
The award is given to the graduating senior in biology whose undergraduate career was marked by outstanding scientific scholarship as well as contributions to the university in areas of artistic expression and/or community service.
Desir will graduate this May with a double major in biology and French in Arts & Sciences.
He is a candidate for graduation summa cum laude in French. He won the department’s Marie Blondiaux Prize for a poem in French, placed second in an international competition with another poem, and is comparing the work of two 16th-century French poets for his senior thesis.
In the meantime he maintained a nearly perfect grade-point average in biology, where he served as a teaching assistant as well.
Although he is an outstanding scholar of both the sciences and the arts, Desir’s most impressive contribution is in community service. The summer following his freshman year, he worked as a volunteer in two hospitals in the Dominican Republic, the country where he grew up.
There, he saw firsthand that many pregnant women who were HIV-positive received no prenatal care, greatly increasing the risk that their babies would be infected at birth.
With fellow student Priya Sury, he won a $10,000 grant from the Davis Project for Peace for an educational project to address this health-care problem, returning to the Domincan Republic in the summer of 2008 for this purpose.
Desir will spend next year at the St. Joseph’s Clinic in Thomassique, Haiti, where he will be responsible for ordering medicines and supplies and act as a translator.
In preparation for this job, he is teaching himself Haitain Creole French, the fifth language he has mastered.
After his year in Haiti, Desir plans to enroll in one of the four MD/PhD programs to which he already has been accepted.