Dr. Patti Erickson Memorial Scholarship

Patti Erickson loved learning and teaching. She graduated from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, a public residential high school for high-achieving students located in Durham, NC, in 1986. In 1990, she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Virginia Tech with a BS honors degree in Biochemistry. She then interned for a year at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, before earning a PhD in Plant Biology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1998. She was employed as a bioeducation scientist at Bio-Rad Laboratories in Hercules, CA from 1999 to 2002. From 2003 to 2008, Patti was a loving stay-at-home mother to her son Spencer, active in a non-profit group that promoted local agriculture, and the entrepreneur of Patti’s Handmade Chocolates, known for award-winning strawberry-balsamic-vinegar infused chocolate truffles.

In 2008, Dr. Patti Erickson joined the faculty at Salisbury University where she was a professor of molecular and cellular biology until her passing in 2021 after a fiercely fought battle with breast cancer. She was an energetic and dedicated teacher who shared with students her passion for science. She mentored many students in research often in collaboration with colleagues at George Washington University and the J. Craig Venter Institute where she had done genomics research during a sabbatical year. She enjoyed taking students to national science conferences where she excelled in getting them to meet and take selfies with Nobel laureates.

The Dr. Patti Erickson Memorial Scholarship was created by her parents, Alfred and Patricia Taranto, to help support students who, like their daughter, love to learn and are dedicated to the pursuit and application of knowledge in the biological sciences. Please consider donating to remember Patti’s legacy and support her passion for science education.