Clearview Public Schools is pleased to announce that Angelina (Weber) Gandolfo and Brendan Bell, Ph. D. have been selected as the 2019 recipients of the Clearview Award of Merit.
The Clearview Award of Merit is offered to present or former students/employees of the school division who have achieved excellence in a particular field, for which they are recognized provincially, nationally or internationally, noted a release.
It is hoped that, by recognizing such excellence, it will act as an inspiration to present and future generations of local students.
The Clearview Award of Merit presentations were made as part of the school division’s annual Recognition Night in Stettler June 6th.
Gandolfo, a former graduate of Gus Wetter School in Castor, spent her elementary, junior high and high school years studying violin and voice and performing at festivals, school functions and community events.
She graduated from McGill University in 2014 with a Master of Music degree.
Previously, she attended the Eastman School of Music graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree with distinction in Violin Performance. She has participated in numerous summer music festivals including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Meadowmount School of Music, The Castleman Quartet Program, Classical Music Festival in Austria, as well as summer studies at Indiana University.
As an avid orchestral musician, Gandolfo has played with the Virginia Symphony, National Academy Orchestra of Canada, Indiana University Festival Orchestra, National Orchestral Institute Festival Orchestra, McGill University Symphony Orchestra, and Eastman Philharmonia.
She has also performed as guest soloist with the Concordia Symphony Orchestra in Edmonton, and is an Alberta Provincial Music Festival award recipient in the category of Strings, Voice, and Creative Music.
Passionate about outreach, she enjoys performing at hospitals, nursing homes, schools, and numerous community functions.
Currently, Gandolfo maintains a private violin studio at the Virginia Beach School of the Arts. She lives in Norfolk with her husband, VSO trumpet player Adam Gandolfo.
Brendan Bell, Ph. D., a former student at Donalda School and Wm. E. Hay, is an associate professor at the Universite De Sherbrooke in Quebec.
Bell’s research aims to identify the disruptions in the expression of genes in cancerous cells and in cells infected by HIV while the virus is still in a latent state, according to a release.
His starting point is the finding that a number of cancers are associated with alteration of the process that normally determines the programmed death of diseased cells.
His overall goal is to understand and determine how cell death signals express themselves at the molecular level. With respect to AIDS, Bell’s work focuses on the latency mechanisms of the HIV virus, and more particularly, the HIV-1 promoter and virus transcription.
Existing therapies are unable to destroy HIV in infected cells when the virus in still in a latent state.
Bell’s work could lead to the development of new gene therapies for cancer and AIDS over the next few years.
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