Robert J. Smiddy Research Award receives $5,000 donation from foundation established in honor of FIU alumnus

In a surprise - and welcome - move, the Armando Alejandre, Jr. Feb. 24 Memorial Foundation has donated $5,000 toward the establishment of a Robert J. Smiddy Research Award in honor of the former FIU student who passed away suddenly last September. With the donation, the account now passes the $20,000 mark in its climb to the $25,000 needed to endow the award.

Smiddy worked in Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Kalai Mathee's lab as part of his Honors College biology curriculum. Mathee said the work he was conducting could potentially lead to a drug package that would lengthen the life span of cystic fibrosis patients and improve their quality of life. Smiddy's research focused on a bacteria that attacks these patients, causing respiratory failure.

Mathee and the other students in her lab plan to complete Smiddy's research and have his thesis written and bound to give to his family in spring 2005.

The oldest of eight children, Smiddy was a former All-Dade swimmer, talented pianist and aspiring doctor before a ruptured spleen cut his young life short.

The Armando Alejandre Foundation learned of Smiddy and the scholarship after foundation members read a story about it in The Miami Herald. Foundation officials contacted Mathee and offered the generous gift.

Armando Alejandre is a former FIU graduate (1988) who was one of the Brothers to the Rescue volunteers shot down in 1996 by Cuban jet fighters as he patrolled the Florida Straits in a humanitarian search-and-rescue mission. The Foundation was established after his death.