Cambridge swap big boost for scholar

Waikato University student Ashley Easter is switching one Cambridge for another in search of cures for diseases such as cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease.

The 22-year-old biochemistry masters student from Cambridge, Waikato, has just been awarded a Woolf Fisher Scholarship which will enable him to undertake doctoral studies at Cambridge University in England next year.

He is one of three recipients this year.

The scholarship programme, in its seventh year, gives each student $100,000 a year for three or four years' post-graduate research at Cambridge or Oxford University.

Mr Easter said heading from one Cambridge to another had an "interesting symmetry". As well, his father was born in a small town just outside of Cambridge, England.

Mr Easter, who will head to the prestigious university next October, said he still was not too sure what he wanted to study – but it would be related to protein folding. When proteins, which make up our DNA, misfolded or were shaped improperly they could cause diseases.

He wanted to apply his studies to real world science and make a difference in finding cures for debilitating diseases.

One of his options, Mr Easter said, was to study under Venki Ramakrishnan, a structural biologist, who received this year's Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

"It's an area which is quite popular at the moment."

Whatever he did in the future, Mr Easter said, he wanted to remain a research scientist because it would "benefit people the most".

The Woolf Fisher Trust gives the scholarships to students with outstanding academic and personal qualities. The late Sir Woolf Fisher, co-founder of Fisher and Paykel, admired integrity, kindness, leadership and capacity for work.

Trust chairman Sir Noel Robinson said all three winners could become world leaders in their own right. The others are Auckland University Human Biology student Anna Dare and Nathalie Saurat, an Otago University science student.