For Ben Ortiz, an assistant professor in biology at Hunter College of the City University of New York, a career in science was something he couldn't imagine when he was growing up.
Lafayette Frederick was born in Dog Bog, Mississippi, and grew up with five brothers and sisters on a cotton farm in Missouri, where his sharecropper father taught him and other local kids in a one-room schoolhouse that doubled as a church.
At the National Institutes of Health, the premiere biomedical research institution in the United States, the struggle against human disease takes on particular significance when we consider the disproportionate impact these diseases have on the country's minority communities.
Early this year, Harvard University President Lawrence Summers made his now-famous remarks speculating that female scientists may have difficulty winning tenured faculty positions because of differences in "intrinsic aptitude."
In 1995 it was unimaginable that within 10 years the presidents of Princeton University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Michigan, and University of California at San Diego would all be women, and remarkably, women scientists.
This resource guide lists a selection of scholarships, grants, organizations, and other support targeted to underrepresented groups, including individuals with disabilities.