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New Scholarship Announced for Science Students

A new scholarship program has been announced that will give South Dakota students interested in science careers the opportunity to study in Italy. 

The 3M Co. is donating $25,000 annually to create the program that will fund tuition, room and board for 10 students each year to attend a summer program that visits Sanford Laboratory in Lead, Princeton University, and the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. 

South Dakota Governor Mike Rounds was at the announcement along with Dan Garry, public issued director for3M.  Also in attendance were Frank Calaprice, professor of physics at Princeton, and Barbara Szczerbinska, a professor at Dakota State University.  Szczerbinska lead the two South Dakota students who participated in the summer program this year to Italy and Princeton.  Also at the conference was Dana Dykhouse, president and CEO of First PREMIER Bank in Sioux Falls. Dykhouse was recently named to a position on the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority by Governor Rounds. 

The National Science Foundation last year named the former Homestake mine as the preferred site for a lab where experiments in subatomic particles and dark matter would be conducted as much as 8,000 feet under the Earth's surface. The South Dakota Science and Technology Authority is using state and private money to reopen the mine, drain accumulated water and develop the Sanford Underground Lab, a mid-level science center at 4,850-feet.

The Davis-Bahcall Scholarships for Underground Science by 3M Company is named for Ray Davis Jr. and John Bahcall, whose Nobel Prize-winning experiments into the discovery of neutrinos were conducted at Homestake. The scholarships will be open to high school seniors and college freshmen at any South Dakota public or private university.