When the phone rang, Rebecca Richards-Kortum thought it was a telemarketer. Instead, it was the MacArthur Foundation calling to tell her she’d just won a grant totaling $625,000. The MacArthur Fellowships, known as the “genius grants”, are often given out each year to 20 to 30 people who show “exceptional creativity.” Past winners have included painters, filmmakers, scientists, a violin-maker, human rights lawyers and others.
In announcing Rebecca as one of this year’s 23 fellows, the Foundation noted her commitment to “improving access to quality health care for all the world’s people”. Rebecca, who teaches bioengineering at Rice University in Houston, is not only developing novel solutions but also training and inspiring the next generation of engineers and scientists to address our shared global challenges. She has made a name for herself in the field not for her own inventions, but for the incredible creativity of her students.
Rebecca says she challenges students to design new medical devices and technologies that can actually be put into practice in low-resource settings. “In the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Malawi, there are 83 broken oxygen concentrators. If any one of them was working, it could be saving lives.” The original syringe pump(注射泵) could operate for only an hour or two on battery backup, but Malawi currently is facing major power outages(断供期). So Rebecca asked her students to re-engineer the device and they’ve come up with a new syringe pump that can run for 66 hours.
In addition to teaching and overseeing projects in remote parts of the developing world, Richards-Kortum is married with six children. She also runs marathons and is planning to run the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D. C. next month. Rebecca says she thinks about marathon running in relation to her work teaching bioengineering. Those final steps in building a new medical device or using a new technology in the field can be the most difficult. “We all have times when we need to hear ‘Come on! You can make it!’” she says. “As an educator, my job is to be that voice.”
4. Why could Rebecca win the MacArthur Fellowships?
A.Because she had just won a genius grant up to $625,000. |
B.Because she inspired students to re-engineer medical devices. |
C.Because she was devoted to making quality health care available. |
D.Because she worked at Rice University as a bioengineering teacher. |
5. What’s the purpose of mentioning the syringe pump in Paragraph 3?
A.To explain the big challenges she met while teaching. |
B.To prove the exceptional creativity of Rebecca’s students. |
C.To stress the importance of designing low-resource devices. |
D.To show her achievement in stimulating students’ creativity. |
6. Which of the following words can best describe Rebecca?
A.Responsible and committed. | B.Patient and generous. |
C.Energetic and cooperative. | D.Critical and courageous. |
7. What do the underlined words “that voice” refer to in the last paragraph?
A.The voice of cheers. | B.The voice of encouragement. |
C.The voice of praise. | D.The voice of education. |