Morrine Omolo, a graduate student in the department of food science and nutrition at the University of Minnesota, has received a Faculty for the Future Fellowship from the Schlumberger Foundation. The fellowship includes a stipend of $50,000 per year for up to five years.
The Faculty for the Future Fellowship program was established in 2004 and provides funding for women from the developing world to pursue a Ph.D. or postdoctoral research in a STEM field. The program hopes to train young women who will return to their home countries to become role models for other young women.
“I am humbled to be joining a family of brilliant women who are from third-world countries but have defied every odd to venture into STEM fields,” said Omolo. “I hope that more girls from Africa can look at this as motivation to work hard and face the future with hope that they too can become engineers, scientists, doctors and professors given the opportunity.”
Omolo is a native of Kikuyu County in Kenya. She came to the United States as a Zawadi Africa Educational Fund Scholar and earned a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry at Fairleigh Dickinson University in Teaneck, New Jersey.
