The Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation established the Curci Scholars program in 2021 to provide full scholarships and living expenses for the first two years of PhD programs for six students at each of three universities: UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, and University of Washington. In 2022, the program was expanded to include UCSF, University of Utah, and University of Colorado Boulder.
The Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation PhD Scholarship at UCSF – established with a generous gift of $1.75M – is dedicated to supporting basic science research in the life sciences. The scholarship supports incoming PhD students in the basic sciences for the first two years of their degree program, with a special emphasis on increasing recruitment of international students. Learn more about the Curci Foundation.
2024-2025 Awardees
Yulia Gutierrez
First Year Student, Biophysics PhD Program
Yulia Gutierrez was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. She attended Northwestern University for her undergraduate studies in biology and chemistry. In Dr. Gabriel Rocklin’s lab, her first project focused on quantifying and understanding aggregation in small protein domains. She was awarded a Northwestern Summer Undergraduate Research Grant and the Chemistry of Life Processes Undergraduate Research Award for her work. She then pivoted to an entirely computational project looking to understand how single amino acid insertion and deletion mutations can improve a protein’s folding stability. Through these projects, Yulia developed a deep interest in understanding protein behaviors and aspired to design proteins with specific properties. She pursued an internship with the Boston-based startup AI Proteins, where she designed miniprotein homooligomers to activate a protein target implicated in cancer. Her undergraduate studies and research experiences have inspired her to pursue future work in understanding and engineering protein behaviors during her PhD at UCSF.
What it means to be a Curci Scholar:
"I feel incredibly honored to have been selected for the Curci Scholarship. Throughout my high school and undergraduate studies, I’ve had the privilege of being surrounded by brilliant female mentors who inspired me to engage in research. With the support of the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, I am excited to pursue my scientific interests in biophysics at UCSF, while also working toward growing into a mentor to inspire the next generation of scientists. I am truly grateful to be a part of this community of scholars dedicated to excellence and inclusivity."
Elizabeth Hardy
First Year Student, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics PhD Program
Elizabeth Hardy was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and as a first-generation student, she has always felt a deep connection to her unique journey. Filled with grit, determination, and excitement, Elizabeth is committed to excelling in her academic career at UCSF. Elizabeth completed her undergraduate studies at Rutgers University, earning a BS in Biology, a BA in Health Sciences, and a BA in Psychology. Her research experience includes assessing nociceptive behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster. She is passionate about exploring the intersections of neuroscience and pharmacology. As a former NIH MARC U-STAR Fellow and a current NIH NIGMS IMSD Fellow, Elizabeth is eager to contribute to the fields of neurology and pharmacology by collaborating with experts and new mentors. She is deeply committed to fostering an inclusive environment, drawing on her experiences to help bridge the gap between fields in the professional and academic community. Elizabeth was a co-founder – with Rashad Reid – of Trailblazers in STEM (TISP), which is dedicated to creating a nationwide, collaborative network of professional and graduate students to support undergraduates across the country. TISP is the first student-founded organization that offers a comprehensive platform for undergraduate students to find mentors who align with their goals and interests.
What it means to be a Curci Scholar:
"Being a Curci Scholar means contributing to closing the generational gap between people who look like me and the majority. Being a Black woman in STEM, it is important for me to actively contribute to representation. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I sought to find a mentor who looked like me, but I was hardly successful. Because of these experiences, I understand the importance of representation in STEM. Words are important, but nothing equals seeing a role model who physically looks like you being in a leadership position in STEM. Therefore, being a Curci Scholar means just that for me. It means being a representative for all the international women passionate about STEM from marginalized backgrounds. It means showing this population that despite the societal challenges, it is possible to excel in STEM. It is an honor to be a Curci Scholar and a humbling experience to contribute to closing that generational gap."
Wen-Chun Lee
First Year Student, Neuroscience PhD Program
Wen-Chun Lee was born and raised in beautiful Yilan, Taiwan. Her interest in brain sciences began in middle school, but she pursued a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the National Taiwan University due to the lack of role models and STEM resources and the eagerness to relieve her parents’ financial pressure. However, forcing herself into a profession she wasn't passionate about led to episodes of depression, during which her motivation and cognition were significantly affected. Upon recovering from depression, she became intensely curious about the mental transformations that occurred during the disorder and how they were restored upon recovery. Driven by this curiosity, she turned to online open courses in psychology, biology, and neuroscience while managing her responsibilities as a full-time mom. In 2019, she joined Dr. Thomas Hnasko's lab at UC San Diego as an intern, studying how different neural circuits in the ventral pallidum influence motivation using mouse models. Later, in 2021, she became a research assistant in Dr. Bernardo Sabatini's lab at Harvard Medical School, focusing on how the development of the prefrontal cortex impacts higher cognitive functions, such as decision-making. Now, as an incoming PhD student at UCSF, she is eager to explore the neurobiological mechanisms that alter perception and behavior during the transition between healthy and pathological states.
What it means to be a Curci Scholar:
"Being selected as a recipient of the Curci scholarship holds immense significance for me. Firstly, the financial support gives me the courage to dream bigger, especially after experiencing how financial pressures and environmental factors can limit one's career aspirations. Additionally, coming from an unconventional background, I’ve often questioned whether I could thrive in a new field and fit into its community. Being recognized by such a prestigious scholarship not only helps dispel these doubts but also strengthens my confidence to continue challenging myself. Finally, having benefited from initiatives aimed at fostering diversity, equity, and inclusion, I deeply understand their transformative power. This experience reinforces my determination to support and guide young people who are struggling to find their passion or pursue their dreams, just as I once did."
Amanda Lipford
First Year Student, Pharmaceutical Sciences and Pharmacogenomics PhD Program
Amanda Taylor Lipford was born in Memphis, TN. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from Xavier University of Louisiana. While enrolled, she did a sexual health internship at the Shelby County Health Department in Memphis. There, she realized how medically underserved her community was, especially concerning HIV. With Memphis’s HIV rates consistently rising, she learned how much her community lacked the resources to be truly aware of their sexual health. These facts led to her desire to pursue a career in drug discovery, hoping that she could one day be an integral part of curing HIV. This led to her exploring many different research opportunities. Her first wet lab research project was in Dr. Tarun Mandal’s lab at Xavier University of Louisiana’s College of Pharmacy. It involved increasing the bioavailability of fenretinide, a cancer drug for children. Later, she pursued an internship at Colgate-Palmolive where she worked on the Oral Pharmaceuticals team and developed a product. Once that internship ended, she was accepted into the NIH BUILD program, where she worked in Dr. Navneet Goyal’s lab at Xavier University of Louisiana’s Department of Chemistry, where her project involved the synthesis and biological studies of thiazole and triazole-based small molecules as factor XIIa inhibitors to serve as anticoagulants. Her work on this project granted her a third-author publication in ACS Omega. With this research background, Amanda plans to dedicate her graduate work to a project focusing on HIV cure and how it may correlate with other viruses.
What it means to be a Curci Scholar:
"As a woman and first-generation college student, being a Curci Scholar is a dream come true. Much of the drive I have to fulfill my aspirations stems from those two portions of my identity, along with being an African American. Furthermore, the drive results from first-hand accounts of seeing people in my community being medically underserved – not being included in clinical trials and not having drugs that cater to them. So to me, being a Curci Scholar means promising to encourage the younger generation; it means bringing more members of medically underserved communities to the biomedical sciences fields with hopes that they can serve as beacons of ambition for later generations."
Luis Oliva
First Year Student, Tetrad PhD Program
Luis Oliva was born in Acapulco Mexico and raised in Pomona, CA. He received his BS in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at UC Santa Cruz, then went on to obtain a MS in Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. His passion for deconvoluting molecular interactions and tinkering with them has led him to study protein interactions with a goal of leveraging this information for therapeutic purposes. Aside from deconstructing the way molecules translate information, he is fascinated by the many different ways people process information and finds a beauty in learning how to cater to different learning styles. His end goal is to become a principal investigator of his own research lab at an academic institution. He says science is intertwined in our daily lives, even in the stoichiometric approach his mother takes when making her cafecito in a 1:2 coffee to sugar ratio. His scientific journey began during his undergraduate studies when he worked at USGS studying mineral precipitation patterns of high-tech minerals (gold, copper, silver, etc.) and medically relevant minerals (hydroxyapatite). During his master’s he had the opportunity to be an ACS Bridge Fellow, under which he extended the application of Fast Photochemical Oxidation of Proteins Mass Spectrometry (FPOP-MS) to probe interactions between intrinsically disordered regions of NFkB-IkBa, and used Hydrogen Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (HDX-MS), and computational approaches such as Frustratometer to further characterize their interactions.
What it means to be a Curci Scholar:
"In my journey, being a Curci scholar means being a dreamer. As immigrant children in the U.S., we were often called ‘DREAMers’ which refers to children that were impacted by DACA and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act. While policies such as DACA remain in limbo, fellowships such as these allow students like me to continue our education and provide us with the opportunity to pursue our dreams. Beyond these opportunities, it lays a foundation to help increase the representation of minoritized individuals in STEM. It is my goal to continue these efforts in increasing diversity, equity and inclusion throughout my career, and it is an honor to be doing so as a Curci Scholar."
