Eric Benjamins - Pitzer College

Eric has worked on vaccine development in laboratories at University of Botswana and at Pitzer College. There is an urgent need in Africa to develop a rabies vaccine that will be much cheaper and easier to produce, store, and transport.  Eric proposes to work at the University of Botswana in Gaborone to develop several preliminary candidates for a more useful rabies vaccine by genetically modifying the Tobacco Mosaic Virus to make it mimic the rabies virus to mammalian immune systems.  He would also participate in community outreach activities to deal with barriers to immunization and education of the public about vaccines.

 

 

 

 

Melissa Krassenstein- Scripps College

While studying in South Africa, Melissa interned with Young in Prison. Working with youth in two facilities for juvenile incarceration, she observed that Ottery Youth Care Centre in Cape Town was based on the principles of restorative justice and had strikingly lower recidivism rates and much better quality of life and rates of employment for boys who leave the Centre than those of other facilities.  She would like to conduct a written and filmed research analysis of this facility and document the effectiveness of its rehabilitative model.  She would use this documentation to support continuation of the Ottery Centre and to share its model with officials at Los Angeles Division of Juvenile Justice.