Campus clips

Yale Cancer Center genetic counselor Ellen Matloff said she was “thrilled” by the Supreme Court decision in June that companies cannot patent human genes. Matloff was one of the plaintiffs in the suit against Myriad Genetics, which had patented genes that are linked to breast cancer. (See “Can Genes Be Intellectual Property?” May/June.)

An endowment to provide scholarships and other support for women in science at Yale has been created by the university in memory of Michele Dufault ’11, a physics and astronomy major who died in a lathe accident at Yale in her senior year.

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny became the best-known graduate of Yale’s World Fellows program in July, when he was convicted of embezzlement in Russia, then released while his case awaits appeal. The charges are widely seen as politically motivated. Navalny, a lawyer and outspoken critic of corruption in Russia, was a World Fellow in 2010.

Tanning beds are now off limits for people under 17 in Connecticut, thanks in part to a Yale School of Public Health study showing that young people who use tanning beds have a 69 percent higher risk of basal cell carcinoma. Yale epidemiologists Susan Mayne and Leah Ferrucci ’06MPH, ’09PhD, who were among the authors of the study, were present when Governor Dannel Malloy signed the bill into law.