Posted 08/15/2006

New doctoral candidate achieves her goals in scholarship
 and citizenship

Mariana Toma-Drane just achieved two all-American goals, both of them nearly back to back.

The University of South Carolina presented her a master's degree on Aug 5 and three days later, the U.S. government declared her a newly minted citizen during  ceremonies in Charleston.

“It was an emotional time. Something I had waited seven years for,” she said.

The naturalization ceremony was just over seven years after she emigrated to South Carolina, excited about making a new home with her fiancé, Dr. Wanzer Drane, a now-retired professor of biostatistics in the Arnold School of Public Health.

Toma-Drane met her husband-too-be in Bucharest, Romania’s eclectic capital city on the Dimbovita River.

The Biological Research Institute in Szeged, Hungary was the last European stop for Toma-Drane who has already put together an impressive set of academic credentials. 

Born in Romania, she had a degree in physical therapy and had begun work, when she realized that her education didn’t jibe with her passion for research.

She returned to college where she received a degree in human medical biology followed by a master’s in genetics and molecular biology, both from the University of Bucharest.

In 1998 she was awarded a fellowship sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), International Cell Research Organization and the Hungarian Academy of Science to participate in the International Training Course on Selected Topics of Modern Biology.

Since 1997, Toma-Drane has been  a guest of the University of Bologna, Italy, Statistics Department to participate in the Summer School - “Statistical Inference in Biology and Human Science”.

The couple was married in October 1999, and in the fall of 2001 Toma-Drane had become a student at the Arnold School. Two years later, she finished her first American degree, a master’s in public health.

“Along the way I realized how important it is to have some statistical knowledge and guided by my academic advisor at that time Dr. Don Edwards (Now chair of the statistics department), I decided to go for a master of industrial statistics,” she said, referring to her latest academic achievement.

For several years, Toma-Drane and her husband have been working on the radiation effects on children during the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. In 2004 Toma-Drane and two other Ukrainian researchers were awarded a Fulbright Alumni Initiated Award (AIA) from July 2004 to June 2006.

This prestigious fellowship provided Toma-Drane with travel funding to and from Ukraine to study the effects of Chernobyl nuclear accident and developmental disorders in children exposed to the fallout.

The Dranes’ work was from the beginning supported and encouraged by two other USC academics: Dr. Harris Pastides, vice-president for research and Dr. Bruce Coull, former dean of the School of Environment.

 Toma-Drane’s efforts were recognized in June when she was presented a “New Investigator Award” at the 2006 American Statistical Association Conference on Radiation and Health.

Toma-Drane has been admitted to the Arnold School as a doctoral candidate and she hopes to continue to work on the Chernobyl cases.

Looking even further ahead, she says there is a possibility she may also be able to work on the public health issues created by the nuclear attacks on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Toma-Drane expects it will take less than a year to finish her doctoral dissertation. During that time she will reside in Columbia while her husband works at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tenn.