SIU Medical Student Receives National Research Fellowship

Caren (DeGiacinto) Schaecher, a third-year medical student at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, has been awarded the 2005 Carolyn L. Kuckein Student Research Fellowship. She is one of approximately 50 medical students nationally who is receiving the award. This is the eleventh consecutive Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) national fellowship awarded to an SIU medical student.

The $4,500 fellowship is to support Schaecher's research project, which explores a possible mechanism for decreased expression of a protein during preeclampsia, one of the leading causes of maternal and fetal death during pregnancy. She is studying a protein that may be pivotal in regulating the production of placenta growth factor from the human placenta.

Schaecher is doing her research under the supervision of Donald S. Torry, Ph.D., associate professor of medical microbiology, immunology and cell biology and of obstetrics and gynecology at SIU.

Schaecher is the daughter of Charles and Vickie DeGiacinto of Edwardsville and the granddaughter of Marian Wargel of Eldorado and Eutha DeGiacinto of Harrisburg. She has a bachelor’s degree in biology from Truman State University in Kirksville, Mo. (2001).

AOA is the only national medical honor society in the world. It recognizes and works to perpetuate excellence in the medical profession by promoting scholarship and research and by encouraging high standards of character and conduct among medical students and graduates.

-30-

NOTE: A jpg image of Schaecher is available upon request to publicaffairs@siumed.edu.