The Yale Physics Department has established the Michele Dufault Summer Research Fellowship and Conference Fund in honor of Michele Dufault ’11, a physics and astronomy major who died last April in an accident in Sterling Chemistry Laboratory.

Created to recognize Dufault’s “tremendous contributions to Yale’s undergraduate science community,” the initiative will fund opportunities for young women to pursue science, including a summer fellowship for a female Yale student and conferences that promote female representation in the physical sciences, according to the American Physical Society website. The Fund hopes to raise $100,000 to endow its efforts in perpetuity but will create an expendable fund to support its activities if it does not realize that goal.

Those interested in contributing to the Fund can write a check payable to Yale University and mail it to the Physics Department, or visit the Yale Development Office website.