Sara G. Arrives in Davis

We are so happy to welcome Sara G. to Davis. Sara will be working with many members of the UC Davis campus community to hone her bioinformatics skills and learn some cutting edge molecular techniques in the Brady Lab.

We are so grateful for everyone's support for all of these projects. We have raised an additional $43,752 through UC Davis and grants to add to the $115,285 we have raised from you!

Total fundraising: $159,037

Love and Science,
RJ Cody Markelz and The Gray Family

SaraG.JPG

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, March for Science Day, and UC Davis Give Day! All our projects are coming to fruition!

"I feel that when the human race acquired the technology and evolved the intelligence necessary to build an industrial society, it also acquired the moral obligation to understand and monitor its impact on the rest of the world." -Sharon Gray

Today until 5pm Pacific time there is fundraising push by UC Davis with the Sharon Gray Memorial Award promoted on the front page (see link on homepage). The UC Davis Sharon Gray Memorial Award has raised an additional $25,000 to support mentoring women or underrepresented populations in the biological sciences. 

We are finalizing the Visa paperwork for our first Ethiopian female science exchange! We worked with Dr. Siobhan Brady, the College of Biological Sciences, the Department of Plant Biology and the UC Davis Genome center to write a successful grant to UC Davis Global Affairs. In total there is now $15,000 in additional funding for this portion of the project. We will post an update when our first exchange starts. 

Thank you again for your support!

IMG_7546.JPG

Happy Holidays

Hello Everyone-

Happy holidays! We are so grateful for your support.

We have been busy making the following three projects a reality with this fund:

1) Sharon Gray Memorial Award- UC Davis
2) Sharon Gray Memorial Award- University of Illinois
3) Scientific exchange for female scientists between Ethiopian Institute of Agricultural Research and UC Davis

Sharon Makes Us Run

"We gathered on a bright and cool late November morning.

It was one day after Sharon Beth Grays first birthday since leaving this world.

We cried, we shared love, memories and wished our beloved Sharon a happy birthday that echoed into the thin late autumn atmosphere. 

Then we ran.

Sharon made us.

Through out Her brilliant and short life Sharon encouraged every one to push themselves, respect themselves and continue to achieve new goals.

Running was a great way for Sharon to stay fit, motivate others and meditate on her day. 

After Sharon got me to start running I often called her and spoke to her while I jogged slowly through a quite Lindenhurst at night.

I now call on all of you to talk to me, let Sharon motivate us again and again to get in shape, enjoy nature and each others company.

I hope to continue to meet, learn from and be motivated from all of you this November. 

Cheers!"

- Stephen Gray

See video here.

Half Way!

This weekend we reached the halfway point! Thank you everyone who contributed, shared, liked, tweeted or just generally honored Sharon these past two weeks.

In order to meet our goal please continue sharing with friends, family, and colleagues. 

We are now in discussion with UC Davis for an endowment scholarship/fellowship in Sharon's name. More details later this week. We will also have an update from our University of Illinois friends and colleagues.

Screen Shot 2016-10-22 at 11.36.25 AM.png

Information About Sara

We are so grateful for this support! 

Here is some information about the first scientist we would like this fund to go towards:

"When we visited the labs on Tuesday, she was so excited to come back to help train the scientists and to help them use the equipment to which they had access, but were not knowledgeable on using. In particular, she spoke about Sara, a young scientist that attended our seminar on Monday and who gave us the tour of the Molecular Biology lab on Tuesday. Sharon spoke with Sara on Monday and that evening began to talk about how it would be wonderful to train Sara and to even bring her to UC Davis to make sure she learned the processes. On Tuesday, she became even more excited about working with Sara and when we left, she gave Sarah her contact information, a hug and some kisses on the cheeks. She saw the eagerness to learn in Sara and that the environment was the only restriction to her education, something she really wanted to help alleviate. I truly hope that this dream of Sharon's can become a reality. I know she would be so happy for Sara."

-Tracy Raines, AgBiome, Sharon's Teammate on Ethiopian Project