When Peter Drotch ’64 was 18 his brother Paul Drotch ’57, a U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, died during a training exercise out of Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. Lt. Drotch’s A-4 jet, designed to support ground forces by flying low, was lost in May 1960, a time when tensions were running high between the U.S., Cuba and the Soviet Union. To recognize Paul’s accomplishments at UConn and UConn’s role in his aspirations, in 1960 the Drotch family established the Lt. Paul L. Drotch, USMC, Class of 1957 Memorial Scholarship. This competition is open to UConn undergraduates in biology, including Biological Sciences, EEB, MCB, PNB, and Biophysics, who have demonstrated both scholarship and financial need and who have completed a minimum of 3 and maximum of 7 semesters of study.

The Todd Schuster Award is dedicated to his memory and seeks to provide fellowship support for a deserving undergraduate student focusing on the field of Biophysics. Requirements are for an undergraduate student pursuing an MCB major to provide an opportunity to have the practical experience of carrying out a research project developed in the laboratory of a faculty member of MCB.  The student must have an established working relationship with a faculty member in MCB, demonstrate a deep interest in science, demonstrate academic promise, and be working on a project that involves the use of chemical and physical methods to investigate biological problems. Dr. Schuster received his BA degree in Humanities in 1958, and his MS in Physical Chemistry in 1960 both from Wayne State University. His Ph.D. was awarded from Washington University in St. Louis in 1963 for Physical Chemistry & Molecular Biology. From 1963-1966 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry and was hired as an Assistant Professor at UConn in 1966. He moved through the ranks to Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics and served as the Head of the B&B Section beginning in 1977. During the 1980s, Dr. Schuster began a small biotechnology firm, became the Director of the UConn Biotechnology Center and the Program Director for the National Ultracentrifugation Facility on campus. He served on several NIH and NSF grants review panels and was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Sciences and Engineering. Over 33 years, he published more than 60 scientific articles dealing with a variety of biophysical problems including hemoglobin structure and tobacco mosaic virus assembly and structure.SCHUSTER, T. M., J. M. TOEDT. 1996. New revolutions in the evolution of analytical ultracentrifugation.  Current Opinion in Structural Biology 6:650-658. JOHN J. STECKERT & TODD M. SCHUSTER. 1982. Sequence specificity of trinucleoside diphosphate binding to polymerized tobacco mosaic virus protein. Nature 299, 32 – 36.

Scholarship for incoming and current undergraduate students majoring in Molecular and Cell Biology who demonstrate academic achievement and proven financial need.