TUSCALOOSA, Ala. -- University of Alabama student Renee Rivas, a junior biology major from Plano, Texas, has received the prestigious Benjamin Cummings Biology Prize for 2006.

The Cummings Prize is a $1,000 grant awarded to only four students nationally each year. Rivas was selected from more than 100 applicants by the international textbook publisher.

The Benjamin Cummings Co., a division of Pearson Education and Addison-Wesley, publishes the general biology textbooks used at UA. Competition for the award was open to students of any institution where Benjamin Cummings biology texts are used. Pearson books reach more than 100 million people worldwide.

A Goldwater Scholar, Rivas is the second UA student to receive this award, making UA the only college or university in the country to have two Benjamin Cummings Prize recipients during the past five years.

Rivas is a member of Beta Beta Beta Biological Honor Society, National Society of Collegiate Scholars and Phi Eta Sigma National Honor Society.

Rivas is currently working in the UA lab of Drs. Guy and Kim Caldwell with graduate student mentor Shu Hamamichi, a Ph.D. candidate, on a project focusing on Parkinson’s disease. Their research is currently being generously supported by the Bachmann-Strauss Dystonia and Parkinson's Foundation of New York City.

Rivas has a special interest in immunotherapies for neurodegenerative disorders using DNA-based vaccines. She plans to use this knowledge for studying the molecular pathology of disease and earning medical and doctoral degrees to direct a biomedical research lab in a hospital setting.