Pharmacy Professor to Make Serum Run Across Alaska

Margaret Black and her team of Siberian huskies will be among the mushers and sled dogs that make the 768-mile Serum Run in subzero temperatures across Alaska in February and March. The dog teams will be on the trail for about three weeks, traveling from Nenana to Nome, Ala., which lies 2 degrees south of the Arctic Circle and is icebound from November through July. The run is to commemorate a 1925 life-saving dog sled relay between the two towns to deliver diphtheria serum to stave off an epidemic. Temperatures can be minus 50 degrees or colder on the trail.

Black has been a musher for more than 10 years. She will be contributing to regular updates on the organization’s Web site, www.serumrun.org, and suggests people can send her messages through the chat room on that same Web site.

Black will be leaving Pullman on Dec. 29 to head to Alaska, where she will be training herself and her dogs for the run until the group leaves Nenana Feb. 18. The run will end about March 9 and Black will return to Pullman during spring break, March 12-16.

Black has been an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences at Washington State University since 1998.

For more information, contact Black before Dec. 29 or after March 16 at (509) 335-6265 or blackm@mail.wsu.edu.

Note to the Editors: Black is leaving town Dec. 29 and will be mostly unavailable for interviews until she returns to Pullman between March 12-16.