I'm extremely grateful to announce that my screenplay SALK has been selected as the winner of the 2009 Student Screenplay Competition sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation . As the winning entry from Carnegie Mellon University, this award comes with a $25,000 prize. SALK is the true story of the life of Jonas Salk and his quest to find a Polio vaccine. Salk lived and worked here in Pittsburgh, and I immediately felt a kinship with him. I became fascinated with Polio and mid-Century vaccination sciences, and that sparked a separate project that went in a totally different direction. It eventually became my award winning play PARADISE KEY , which suggests an alternate history of the discovery of the vaccine. UPDATE: Check out the web site Science and Film , sponsored by the Museum of the Moving Image, for more information about the Sloan awards and the Sloan community. They also have a synopsis for SALK listed under the Student Film Awards section.
