Honoring A Worldly Man: Luc Bossuyt/
Bristol-Myers Squibb Endowment Underwrites Student Travel
Luc Bossuyt loved to travel. Whether it was
family car trips through South Africa, or
business trips to Europe and the Pacific Rim, each journey helped fill his insatiable desire
to learn about the world, its cultures, and its
people. Those fortunate enough to meet the
Belgian-born scientist and businessman were quick to
admire his world mindedness, and to enjoy his sense
of humor and down-to-earth qualities. As a father,
he encouraged his two sons to develop a global intelligence comparable to his own.
Right: Luc Bossuyt, shown here in his native Belgium, also lived in South Africa and England before settling in Connecticut. A talented chemist and chemical engineer, he was employed by the Worldwide Consumer Medicines division of Bristol-Myers Squibb, working closely with scientists from all over the world to develop new pharmaceutical products. Bossuyt is also an accomplished linguist, speaking five languages.
On July 17, 1996, Bossuyt, a 52-year-old technology director with Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. in New York, boarded Paris-bound TWA Flight 800 for a business trip. Twelve minutes into the flight, the aircraft exploded off the coast of Long Island, killing everyone on board.
In the wake of this incomprehensible tragedy, Bristol-Myers Squibb and Luc Bossuyt's family chose to honor his memory by creating matching endowments of $25,000 each at UC Davis, where son Francis Bossuyt is currently a graduate student in the campus's animal behavior program. Thanks to their generosity, the Luc Bossuyt/Bristol-Myers Squibb Scholarship Fund will support international travel to scientific meetings by selected graduate students engaged in the exciting field of structural biology.
"Money for academic travel for graduate students is extremely limited," says Dean Mark McNamee. "This fund will enable outstanding students to attend key presentations and to present their own research findings to an international audience, both of which are enormously valuable experiences for a young scientist."
It is clear that Francis Bossuyt inherited his father's adventurous spirit. He has already traveled to Kenya and the Alaska Peninsula to conduct wildlife studies. This summer he ventures off to Peru to evaluate sites for census studies of the titi monkey, the subject of his thesis research. He recently learned that his work will be funded by the Leakey Foundation.
The young Bossuyt thinks his father would be pleased to know that talented graduate students at UC Davis will benefit from the endowment fund for years to come. "My father considered education to be a priority," he says. "He always supported any endeavor to learn about life and the world."
Assistant Professor Andrew Fisher (left) recently introduced UC Davis graduate student Francis Bossuyt to the campus' structural biology facility, where they discussed the operation of a new X-ray crystallography system, pictured here. Fisher was recruited to the campus last year as part of an ambitious new program in structural biology that engages graduate students in the development of high-resolution images of macromolecules.
UC Davis Biological Sciences Newsletter - Summer 1997