A Nanaimo university student is the recipient of a prestigious graduate scholarship.
Angeline de Bruyns, a bachelor of science graduate (major in biology and minor chemistry) was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarship master’s award worth $17,500.
“My family and I were ecstatic when we heard the news,” said de Bruyns. “Receiving this award truly means all my hard work and commitment while studying at VIU has paid off.”
De Bruyns sees the scholarship as further reassurance to her parents they made the right decision to immigrate to Canada from Namibia and offer their children greater educational opportunities. She is also grateful to Vancouver Island University faculty and staff members who encouraged her to apply for the prestigious award.
Biology professor Sue Sanders says de Bruyns clearly earned support from VIU.
“I have never encountered anyone so dedicated to her academic career,” said Sanders. “Angeline exemplifies excellence, dedication, and a passion for science that is rare and she is a most deserving recipient of this prestigious award.”
De Bruyns will work under the supervision of David Dankort at McGill University to undertake her proposed cancer research, which focuses on genes and melanoma malignancy and metastasis.
She is one of 184 students across Canada offered the award.
De Bruyns plans to head to Montreal in late August to begin her two-year master’s program. In the meantime, she is working in the genomics lab of VIU’s Centre for Shellfish Research.
VIU student earned array of awards
Angeline de Bruyns, a graduate of Nanaimo’s Dover Bay Secondary School, earned an array of scholarships, awards and bursaries for academic excellence.
Her top marks in high school entitled her to a $2,000 entrance scholarship to VIU in 2008. Her strength in academics earned her a full tuition scholarship through the President’s Scholarship for Continuing Students.
In 2011, she won a $4,500 Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council Undergraduate Student Research Award to gain research experience with Helen Gurney-Smith. That award was topped-up and paid her salary as a research assistant in the Centre for Shellfish Research genomics lab during the summer and fall of 2011.
This spring, de Bruyns was awarded a $500 scholarship as the VIU biology department’s most outstanding student and received the $250 Michael L. Warsh Law Corp. Undergraduate Research Award.