New Postdoctoral Fellowship Program at Harvard for Black Chemists

Blacks make up less than 2 percent of all chemistry department faculty at the nation’s major universities. In an effort to increase the number of minority chemists in the academic world, Harvard University has announced the establishment of 12 new postdoctoral research fellowships for women and minority chemists. The fellows will work for one year in the university’s chemistry or chemical biology departments. Fellows will have the opportunity to apply for a second year of funding.

The university has allocated $2.6 million for the program, which has been named in honor of Mary Fieser, a 1930s graduate of Radcliffe College who worked in her husband’s chemistry laboratory at Harvard for many years. Fieser died in 1997, leaving much of her estate to Harvard’s chemistry department.

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