Kendall ‘82 and Laura Hendrick

The impact of right now

Kendall ‘82 and Laura Hendrick were already making an impact on students through their commitment to scholarships through the Beyond Boundaries Scholars program. However, when they learned about the Moraco Challenge, they quickly realized how many more students they could reach by supporting a professor through a fellowship. 

“Retaining the best faculty at the university will allow Virginia Tech to attract more top-level students that will go out in industry and improve lives around the world,” said Kendall, a mechanical engineering alumnus who spent his career in the medical diagnostics field. “Being able to invest in the quality of education at a professor-level will improve the learning experience for students with an immediate impact.”

Although the Hendrick’s gift will be made over five years, the matching component enabled the fellowship to be utilized the minute they signed the paperwork. Within a few months, Eli Vlaisavljevich was named the Kendall and Laura Hendrick Junior Faculty Fellow.

“This fellowship has helped expand my lab’s international collaboration with our clinical and academic partners in Spain, France, Turkey, and Malawi,” said Vlaisavljevich. “These programs are essential to the work we are doing to expand histotripsy into clinical translation for patients throughout the world. The support from this fellowship has provided resources for our students to directly engage with these international collaborators while strengthening our current partnerships and building new opportunities. We are very thankful for this support from the Hendrick family.”