Scientist Who Studied How Mosquitoes Transmit Diseases Dies After Ingesting Cyanide
November 17th, 2010Via: The Tampa Tribune:
A University of South Florida researcher stumbled out of her hotel room Monday night and told two guests she had ingested cyanide, police said.
Chitra Chauhan, 33, wife and mother of a 3-year-old, was pronounced dead at a hospital about two hours later, victim of an apparent suicide. A small amount of potassium cyanide was found on a table in her room.
The nature of Chauhan’s work and the manner of her death turned what investigators characterized as a private act into a public spectacle.
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Chauhan worked in the USF Center for Biological Defense and Global Health Infectious Disease Research, which is housed at the USF Research Park on the south end of campus. The center was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to study bioterrorism and emerging infections.
Security is tighter throughout the research park because work is done there with private companies and the Department of Defense.
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Chauhan was investigating treatments for tropical diseases common around the world, including malaria, USF said.
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Chauhan has worked at USF as a post-doctoral researcher since Dec. 26, 2007. Her annual salary was $45,183. Police gave her address as a condominium on Palm Springs Boulevard in Tampa Palms.
She obtained a doctorate degree in 2005 from the Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology in New Delhi, India. She went to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana to join her husband, who had taken a faculty position there after finishing graduate school, said Professor Dave Severson, who runs the lab where she worked.
The lab studied how mosquitoes transmit diseases, and Chauhan focused on the transmission of dengue fever.
Related?
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Reader almaverdad sent:
Miami Sees First Locally Acquired Case of Dengue in 60 Years
“Her annual salary was $45,183….” Seems low-ball for a doctorate working on bio-weapons, but of course, she is probably an HB1 visa employee and lucky to have the job, probably on contract with no bennies either…but of course, now she is dead…this seems sinister but I imagine it will turn out she was a child bride to her husband and unhappy in her marriage…taking insecticide seems to be a common method of suicide in India….of course, I am being somewhat cynical and tongue-in-cheek…
She was a postdoc, so $45K is pretty good.
By good you mean better than what most post-docs make. For the amount of work done, in my opinion, it is an insult. Besides, the older people often steal the younger people’s ideas, pass them off as their own, and then load down the younger people with so much work that they don’t have time to notice.
It’s an old story, I guess.
By good you mean better than what most post-docs make.
Yes, well, my hostility toward the scam of “academia” is so ingrained that, even when I go to make a straight comment about it, sarcasm leaks out.
A close friend of mine was offered $35K/year for a (science) post doc. (Or, maybe it was $30K.) Anyway, the offer was contingent on him bringing the grants to fund the research at the lab! haha.
He decided to remain jobless and homeless instead.
My wife was in the process of writing her dissertation (Comp Lit) when she woke up one morning and decided that she’d had enough of academia. She said something like, “It doesn’t have anything more to offer me at this point.”
She cut it loose and hasn’t regretted her decision at all. She’s still on the department’s listserv and even we are surprised by what an apocalypse the whole thing has become.
man, I just notice how many times I said “of course…”! funny, I make more than this woman and I have no degree….and my wife makes twice that and has no degree…not bragging, I do realize we are very fortunate and lucky to even have jobs…but we are certified in our various fields, which are more experience-valued, anyway…maybe that makes the difference…
I walked away from academia half way through my PhD in Evolutionary Biology back in 1995 and have never regretted it. Nothing more dysfunctional than a bunch of egotistical ivory tower dwellers who think, just because you’ve agreed to work in their lab, that it means you want to emulate them.
Very few of them can maintain a healthy relationship with a significant other and I can count on one hand the number who I thought were really happy in life. Very long on intelligence, but really lacking in wisdom and humility. Not for me…
But back to the article. I doubt this women committed suicide. I wonder who poisoned her and what truths were they trying to keep hidden?