This fund was endowed in 2006 after its initial establishment in 1987 by Geoffrey’s parents, Dr. Mary Ann Clark and Nicholas E. Ryan, Jr.

Mary Ann Clark is a 1986 graduate of the clinical and health psychology internship program. She was drawn to the field of child and adolescent psychology because of a desire to better understand human behavior and the factors that successfully influence behavior change.

In 1987, while collecting data for her dissertation on cognitive and neuropsychological performance in children with diabetes, Dr. Clark gave birth to a son, Geoffrey Clark-Ryan. Geoffrey suffered from Trisomy 13, a rare chromosomal disorder that causes severe birth defects, and lived for only two weeks.

“We wanted his name to live on and his life to have had a positive impact,” Dr. Clark said. “We chose to establish an endowment to support other UF clinical and health psychology students doing pediatric research in the hope that it would help other parents who had been through the heart-wrenching experience of watching their child struggle with a serious illness