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Centre College junior wins Goldwater Scholarship DANVILLE, KY - Kevin Wood, a Centre College junior from Georgetown, Ky., has won a Goldwater Scholarship, the premier award for undergraduates in science and engineering. The award will cover most of the costs of his senior year at Centre. Wood is majoring in chemical physics, and last summer he was chosen for a prestigious internship at the Harvard Medical School. He joined the research team of a nuclear cardiologist in an investigation of arteriosclerosis. This summer Wood will head for Yale, where he will work with Sidney Altman, a Nobel Laureate in biochemistry, on RNA research. "I looked up the last few Nobel prize winners and wrote to them specifically," he says. "I wrote twelve of them and got seven responses. I was fortunate to find some really nice people. But Yale was the one I wanted most." Wood has always wanted to go into medicine, but finds that his interests are evolving. "I kept saying I'll do math now and later I'll get into medicine, but finally I decided to see how to apply math and physics to medicine instead of giving them up," he says. His current plans call for a joint M.D./Ph.D. degree in preparation for a career in investigational medicine or biomedical engineering. Wood is Centre's fifth Goldwater winner in the last 10 years. The federally endowed awards have been given since the mid-1980s. Wood is the son of Paula Campbell of Georgetown and Ernest Wood of Lexington. He is a 1997 graduate of Scott County Senior High School. - end -
Communications Office Public information coordinator: Patsi Barnes Trollinger |