Fundamental discoveries about genetics, development, disease and more will be fueled for generations to come by a $500,000 gift that creates an endowment providing permanent support for the one of the world’s most widely used biomedical research resources, located at Indiana University Bloomington.
The gift from Lawrence W. Washington will create a permanent legacy in honor of his late wife, Dr. Kathleen A. Matthews, who devoted her career to building the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center, housed in the Department of Biology within the College of Arts and Sciences. The Kathy Matthews Fund will support research resource development, distribution, and the long-term sustainability of the Stock Center in perpetuity.
The Stock Center maintains thousands of documented, living genetic strains of Drosophila melanogaster, a small fruit fly that has served as one of science’s most powerful tools for more than a century. Because fruit flies share a remarkable amount of genetic machinery with humans, and because they reproduce quickly and are easy to study in a laboratory, researchers around the world utilize flies in their experiments. They depend on the Stock Center to supply and preserve the specific fly strains they require.
“Lawrence Washington’s commitment to permanently endow an institution that the global research community depends on every day will have great and lasting benefits for generations to come,” said Rick Van Kooten, Executive Dean of the College and Professor of Physics. “This gift, importantly, honors a scientist whose quiet, determined work changed the course of biomedical science. We are profoundly grateful.”
“The Kathy Matthews Fund gives the Bloomington Drosophila Stock Center a permanent source of funding to further enhance the already tremendous research mission of the Center, ultimately impacting genetic and biomedical research nationally and globally,” said Armin Moczek, The Class of 1955 Professor of Biology and Chair of the department. “For the students and scientists who work here, and for the thousands of researchers worldwide who rely on what this Center provides, this gift is genuinely transformative. It is also a deeply moving tribute to a scientist who gave so much of herself to building something that will help humanity over many lifetimes.”
Matthews arrived at IU Bloomington in 1979 for postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Thomas Kaufman, studying the genetics and developmental biology of Drosophila melanogaster. She stayed on at IU, and in the following decades took stewardship of a historic but modest collection of fewer than 2,000 genetic strains. Matthews devoted her career to transforming the Stock Center into what is today — an indispensable global resource for biomedical research, now housing more than 91,000 documented stocks.
Matthews earned her bachelor’s degree in general studies and her doctorate in genetics from the University of Texas at Austin, where her graduate research examined the genetics and population dynamics of mobile genetic elements, segments of DNA that can move within a genome. Her move to Bloomington became a lifelong commitment to IU and to the vast resource she built there.
Matthews died on March 17, 2018, following a brief illness.
Washington earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Texas at Austin, where he and Matthews met when she was in graduate school and he was working in the Biology department. Together they moved to Bloomington. For three decades Washington worked with the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute at IU, managing the Institute’s DNA sequencing facility.
The endowment advances the Stock Center’s core mission to house and provide a collection of documented, living genetic stocks of wide value to current research, preserving strains with clear future value, and offering the information and support services that researchers worldwide need to make the most of these materials.
Investing in centers that make discovery possible—like the Stock Center—is a central priority of Never Daunted: Indiana University’s Campaign for the Future. The campaign will expand opportunities for students, fuel life-changing innovation, and strengthen communities across Indiana and beyond.
The Department of Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences offers undergraduate degrees, nationally ranked graduate programs, and world-class research spanning the full breadth of biological questions and experimental systems. Its faculty, research scientists, and graduate and undergraduate students explore everything from ecosystems to microbiology and developmental biology, evolution to cell biology, molecular biology to systems biology, bioinformatics, and genomics.
Learn more about the impacts made possible with a gift to the College of Arts and Sciences at IU Bloomington.
The College of Arts