Research Education News

Congratulations to Dan Steiner for winning a Sayeeda Zain Fall travel award. Dan is planning to attend the SPIE Photonics West meeting, to be held at the Moscone Center, San Francisco, California, March 6-11, 2021, He states "I am excited to represent our department and present my work in San Francisco (virtually or otherwise) . Networking and reaching out to labs and PIs at this conference will help me learn more about the entrepreneurial side of science and how to develop my career after I defend." The Sayeeda Zain Travel Award honors the distinguished career and charitable life of Dr. Sayeeda Zain. The award is given in recognition of research excellence to support expenses associated with attendance at a scientific conference or corporate internship to gain practical experience. Dan Steiner is a Biophysics graduate student studying in Dr. Ben Miller's lab

Karl Foley, an MSTP graduate student, has received an NIH F30 award starting Feb 1, 2020 for his research in the Xia lab.

Project title: "Protein phosphatase 1 isoforms and human de novo mutations in synaptic plasticity"

Agency: NIMH (F30MH122046), $50K total/year for four years starting 2/1/2020

Congrats Karl!

Nazish Jeffery

Graduate student Nazish Jeffery published an editorial-style column entitled "Scientists Must Communicate More Clearly" which appeared on the Opinion page of the Sunday, October 4th edition of the Democrat and Chronicle. Ms. Jeffery argues that scientist have a civic duty to clearly inform and educate the public and public officials with regard to the results of biomedical research. She states "As scientists, our civic duty becomes twofold. Not only must we better our understanding of the world through research, we also need to use our training and expertise to help inform who govern so they can craft policies that are scientifically sound." Ms. Jeffery will be taking a brief hiatus from her laboratory research in Michael Bulger's lab to remotely participate in an internship with the American Institute of Biological Sciences in Washington DC, where she will focus on science and public policy.

Dr. Robert Freeman has been selected as this year's recipient of the Outstanding Graduate Course Director Award. Established in 2013, this award is based on the course's record of excellence based on course-instructor survey evaluations and letters of recommendation from students enrolled in the course.

This award comes with $1,000, to be paid as unrestricted education support monies (for education-related expenses such as travel to professional meetings, work-related computers, textbooks, courses, etc.) and is available immediately.

The award will be presented at the School of Medicine and Dentistry Convocation Ceremony. The Virtual Convocation Celebration will be posted to the following websites at 5pm on Monday, September 14th:

• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/graduate.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/md.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd.aspx

The department would like to congratulate Bob on this recognition, as it is a well-deserved honor.

Halima Aweis has been selected by our faculty to be one of this year's recipients of the Graduate Alumni Fellowship Award. Graduate alumni in the School of Medicine and Dentistry established this fellowship award to recognize an incoming graduate student's promise for exceptional accomplishment in graduate study.

The award, which includes a monetary prize of $500, will be presented at the School of Medicine and Dentistry Convocation Ceremony. The Virtual Convocation Celebration will be posted to the following websites at 5pm on Monday, September 14th:

• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/graduate.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/md.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd.aspx

Congratulations Halima!

Post-doctoral associate, Romeo Blanc, in the lab of Dr. Joe v. Chakkalakal has been selected to be this year's recipient of the Outstanding Postdoctoral Researcher Award. This award was established in 2015 to recognize a School of Medicine and Dentistry postdoc for outstanding research contributions. The selection was based on the originality, creativity, and significance of your research accomplishment.

The award will be presented at the School of Medicine and Dentistry Convocation Ceremony. The Virtual Convocation Celebration will be posted to the following websites at 5pm on Monday, September 14th:

• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/graduate.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education/md.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/education.aspx
• https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd.aspx

Congratulations on being chosen for this award, Romeo!

Please join the department in congratulating Megan Ulbrich, this year's winner of the Melville A. Hare Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award is given annually by the Department of Microbiology and Immunology to a graduate student who has displayed outstanding qualities of mentoring and teaching in one or more MBI courses. The award will be officially conferred at URMC Convocation in the late summer.

Megan is currently an IMV graduate student in Michelle Dziejman's lab working on multidisciplinary approaches to uncover novel effector protein functions. Megan grew up in Buffalo, NY and received her B.S. in Microbiology from the University of Pittsburgh.

This week's URMC Research Heroes featured the Maquat lab's Tatsuaki Kurosaki, PhD, and Shuhei Mitsutomi, MS, who were recognized today for their work on SARS-CoV-2.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CA-QN7oAl07/

Both Tatsuaki and Shuhei have worked as members of the Maquat Lab (Center for RNA Biology and the Department of Biochemistry & Biophysics) during the sequestration on SARS-CoV-2, collaborating with a lab at Harvard to determine the mechanism by which the virus inhibits human-cell nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) so as to express and replicate its RNA efficiency.

From Tatsuaki: "Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which causes the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic, is a novel enveloped RNA virus carrying a large (~30 kb) positive-sense single-stranded RNA genome. Although human cells innately have an RNA surveillance pathway called nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) that generally protects cells from infection by many different types of viruses, little is known about how SARS-CoV-2 inhibits NMD to proliferate in human cells. We hope that our research helps to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of SARS-CoV-2 proliferation in human cells, eventually contributing toward the development of therapeutic strategies to combat COVID-19."

Matthew L. Rook, M.S. (MacLean Lab) has been awarded a Joan Wright Goodman Dissertation Fellowship for 2020-2021! This fellowship was endowed by Joan Wright Goodman, PhD class of 1952, to support doctoral students across disciplines in the sciences. It is one of the University's most competitive dissertation fellowships and is given to students who display exceptional ability and promise. It is a testimony to the University's commitment to supporting your scholarship.

The award is $20,000, and must be used over at least 9 months between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. Congrats Matthew!

Celebrating the more than 600 graduate students and postdoctoral appointees at the University of Rochester School of Medicine & Dentistry. Meet some of our grad and post doc researchers.