Contributions of more than $20,000 from Mrs. Michael (Armelle) Cava of Brookline, Mass. and supporters of the Department of Chemistry have established The M.V. Lakshmikantham Endowed Scholarship, which will provide scholarships for students pursuing a degree in chemistry. The scholarship is named in memory of Dr. M.V. Lakshmikantham, a researcher at The University of Alabama from 1985-2006. Lakshmikantham became one of the first women in India to earn a doctorate in scientific research. She earned both her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from Presidency College of the University of Madras. Because she could not pursue a research career in her native India, she went to Australia and later to the United States to work professionally. In 1966 she and Dr. Michael Patrick Cava at Wayne State University began collaborating on research that lasted for more than four decades. Their work included research done in UA’s Department of Chemistry. Lakshmikantham and Cava pioneered synthetic organic chemistry of natural products and produced more than 600 scientific publications between them. She died in 2006. Cava died in 2010.