Fellowships for Graduate Study

Each year, the Edith and Frances Mulhall Achilles Memorial Fund generously provides graduate fellowship grants for outstanding alumnae. The application and interview process is overseen by the Fellowship Committee of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC). Finalists are chosen based on academic excellence, quality of references, and postgraduate goals, among other criteria. The following five alumnae are the recipients of the 2016 Edith and Frances Mulhall Achilles Memorial Fellowships for Graduate Study.

Mary Glenn '13

Mary Glenn is a first-year student in the master’s program in sustainable development at the University of California, Berkeley. Her work focuses on sustainable poverty alleviation through the empowerment of women. Previously, she worked with individuals affected by HIV/AIDS, substance use, and mental illness as a case manager in New York City. At Barnard, she received her degree in Spanish and Latin American cultures and human rights, and was an Athena Scholar and 2013 Global Symposium Student Fellow.

Julia Mix Barrington '12

Julia Mix Barrington is a PhD candidate in English at Boston University. Her research focuses on the role of the sea in the work of Shakespeare and other early modern writers, situating onstage voyages, shipwrecks, piracy, cross-dressing, and religious conversions in the context of English trade in the Mediterranean and the colonization of the Americas. She also runs Willing Suspension Productions, which stages the neglected non-Shakespearean drama of the English Renaissance. This year, she directed Massinger and Fletcher’s 1622 comedy  The Sea Voyage .

Denise Napolitano '08

After earning a degree in chemistry from Barnard, Denise Napolitano worked for the New York City Police Department as a criminalist, performing forensic analysis on evidence submitted to the department’s crime lab. In 2012, she began a PhD program in analytical chemistry at Arizona State University. Her research explores the effect of organic reactions occurring in clouds and fog on the amount of particles in the atmosphere, which may aid in alleviating the sources of organic compounds that have a negative effect on climate and human health.

Laura Quinton '13

Laura Quinton is a PhD candidate in the history department at New York University. A double major in dance and history at Barnard, she received a master’s degree in modern British and European history from the University of Oxford in 2014, where she studied the life and work of Andrée Howard, a frequently overlooked 20th-century female ballet choreographer. Her current research concerns ballet and British identity, nationalism, and imperialism in the mid-20th century.

Saranya Wyles '09

Saranya Wyles received a degree in neuroscience from Barnard and is now an MD-PhD candidate at the Mayo Clinic, as well as a research scholar for Minnesota Regenerative Medicine. Prior to beginning her medical studies, she worked at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute. Her research focuses on using patient-specific stem cells for cardiovascular disease modeling. Her work has led to innovations in drug targeting for dilated cardiomyopathy and helped physician-scientists to recapitulate genetic disorders using stem cell models.