IUP has granted the 2018 Patricia Hilliard-Robertson Memorial Scholarship for Outstanding Female Science Student to a graduate of Greater Johnstown High School.
Rebekah Mikeasky has also received the Biology Undergraduate Research Experience Fund Award and the Markovich-Shutske Scholarship. The junior is majoring in cell and molecular biology in the biology honors program. She is a member of the Cook Honors College working with her advisor, Dr. Robert Major, on a research project relating to the role genes play in autophagy, which occurs when the human body consumes its own tissue as a metabolic process resulting from starvation or disease.
The Hilliard-Robertson scholarship is in memory of Dr. Patty Hilliard-Robertson, a 1985 graduate of IUP from Homer City who died in an airplane crash in Texas in 2001. At the time of the accident, she was an astronaut preparing for an assignment aboard the International Space Station.
