Plainview Resident Named Fulbright Scholar
After fighting her own personal battle with Acute Lymphcytic Leukemia, Plainview
resident Graceann Bartilucci set her mind to help ease the struggle for
others. Bartilucci, a 1990 graduate of the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island
University, is spending the next 9 months researching the gene that causes
this disease. Her research at the National Center for Biotechnology at
The Autonomous University in Madrid is being funded by a Fulbright grant
she was awarded last summer.
Bartilucci, who is in remission, earned a bachelor's degree in biology
with a minor in Spanish from C.W. Post. She has spent the last several years
working as a laboratory assistant at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. "The
gene responsible for my illness is 16INK4, so I have a personal interest
in the research as well as a professional one," said Bartilucci. Back
in 1994, Dr. Manuel Serrano discovered the gene when Bartilucci was his
lab assistant at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. She decided to pursue a
Fulbright scholarship after he asked her to work in his new lab in Spain.
"Graceann is one of the brightest scholars in our university,"
said Maithili Schmidt-Raghavan, C.W. Post's Fulbright Advisor. "Her
commitment to excellence and impressive academic accomplishments set a fine
example for all our students."
The principle purpose of the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship
is to foster mutual understanding among peoples of the world through educational
and cultural exchange. Participating governments and host institutions in
many countries and the United States contribute financially through cost-sharing,
as well as through indirect support such as supplementary salary, tuition
waivers, university housing and other benefits. Long Island University students
have received an unprecedented number of Fulbright grants. Seven Southampton
seniors won Fulbright Scholarships this spring, the best single-year total
in the College's 34-year history and one of the highest for any equivalent-sized
college in the nation. In the past 22 years, 28 have earned the scholarship.
In addition, three Fulbrights were graduates of Long Island University's
C.W. Post Campus this spring, bringing the 9-year total to 12.
"Receiving the Fulbright scholarship and working in Spain with a
talented scientist who believes that I would be an asset to his lab and
who can teach me so much in the field of molecular biology, will, by far,
constitute the most exciting chapter in my life," said Bartilucci.
For more information call the C.W. Post Public
Relations Office at (516) 299-2333 or e-mail cwpostpr@aurora.liunet.edu | 
