'Women in Science' fellowship to fund postdoc's study of deep-sea methane

Laura Lapham leaning into the instrument package with Rachel Younge Wilson, a current Oceanography graduate student of Jeff Chanton's. The instrument package contains samplers that will collect water samples over... Click here for more information.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A L'Oreal USA Fellowship for Women in Science has been awarded to Florida State University alumna Laura Lapham, a postdoctoral research assistant and courtesy faculty member in FSU's Department of Oceanography, and this year, one of just five young women scientists in the nation selected for the prestigious $40,000 prize.

The L'Oreal USA Fellowships for Women in Science program -- administered by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) -- was launched in 2003 to help women in science achieve their goals by providing them with funding to help support 12 months of postdoctoral research. Highly competitive, the fellowships are bestowed each year on a small, elite group of researchers from the fields of mathematics, engineering, technology (including computer science), and the life and physical/material sciences.

For 2008, Lapham, 33, a native of Sarasota, Fla., was one of 196 applicants.

Those fellowships represent a much-needed investment. In the United States, women earn half of all science degrees and comprise half of the total workforce yet hold just 20 percent of the science jobs.

Laura Lapham in front of the Johnson SeaLink Submersible, next to one of the instrument boxes. Click here for more information.

Lapham's $40,000 award will underwrite new instrumentation essential to her geochemical research in the Gulf of Mexico on the formation and decomposition of deep-sea gas hydrates -- ice-like crystalline formations containing methane gas within the ice lattice.