The Vincent du Vigneaud Memorial Research Symposium is a one-day, student-run event held annually, showcasing the cutting-edge research conducted by our graduate students in our labs. The day features a keynote speech, delivered by a preeminent scientist selected by the students; oral and poster presentations by the participating students; and a reception and awards ceremony, honoring the day's winners for best oral presentation and poster presentation.
List of Awardees
2026
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
First Place:
- Nolan Caile, “Dissecting the role of histone acetyltransferase CBP/p300 on the transcriptional and architectural establishment of cell-type specific programs following cell division” (Professor Effie Apostolou)
- Cheyenne Bright, "A locus-level bioinformatics framework for quantifying 23S rRNA copy number and linezolid resistance mutations in enterococcus faecium" (Professor Cesar A. Arias)
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
Aakanksha Rajiv Kapoor, "Novel insights into the immunoregulatory role of radiation activated club cells in non-small cell lung cancer" (Professor Vivek Mittal)
Esther Lee, "Mechanical licensing of cytotoxic degranulation" (Professor Morgan Huse)
Guillermo Hoppe-Elsholz, "Transferable B-lactam resistance in multidrug-resistant enterococcus faecalis (Efs) via truncation of pbp4 and acquisition of a novel PBP (PBP-4a) gene" (Professor Cesar A. Arias)
Margarida Rosa, "A molecular mechanism of Li⁺ inhibition of MFSD2A mediated lysolipid transport" (Professor George Khelashvili)
Matthew Fiedler, "Recapitulation of tissue-scale ventricular tachyarrhythmic mechanisms in human engineered heart tissues" (Professor Francisco Altamirano)
Sandy Rajkumar, "BEND3 regulates polycomb-mediated epigenetic repression during development" (Professor Yicheng Long)
Ziqi (Christine) Yu, "Targeting cytosolic mutant IDH1 by hyperactivation to induce cancer cytotoxicity" (Professor Andy Intlekofer)
Aliya Holland, "Mechanosurveillance of Senescent Cells" (Professor Morgan Huse)
Oral Presentation Awards
First Place:
- Bjoern Perder, “Hypoxia-activated scleraxis guides perivascular differentiation of epicardial progenitors in heart development and regeneration” (Professor Jingli Cao)
Second Place:
- Richard Garner, “FOXA2 reprograms androgen signaling to promote lineage plasticity in advanced prostate cancer” (Professor David Rickman)
Third Place:
- Charlie Warren, “Profiling Ubiquitin Interactions and Affinities” (Professor Jacob Geri)
2025
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
First Place:
- Sebastian Brylka, “Optimizing Missing Data Detection in Commercial Health Data” (Professor Samprit Banerjee)
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
- Anna Peczak, "Exploring potential mechanisms by which the E167K variant of TM6SF2 increases MASLD predisposition in humans" (Professor Robert Schwartz)
- Guillermo Hoppe-Elsholz, “Molecular Analysis of Enterococcus faecalis with Reduced Susceptibility to Ampicillin Associated with a Frameshift Deletion in pbp4” (Professor Cesar Arias)
- Jaina Wollowitz, “Machine Perception-Based Prediction of Pregnancy Loss” (Professor Daniel Heller)
Oral Presentation Awards
- Dana Goerzen, “Machine Learning-Enabled Liquid Biopsy Identifies Brain Tumors via Systemic Immune and Tumor Microenvironment Signature” (Professor Daniel Heller)
- Wanyi Chen, “Trastuzumab Deruxtecan (T-DXd) Resistance via Loss of HER2 Expression and Binding” (Professor Sarat Chandarlapaty)
2024
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
First Place:
- Ziqi (Christine) Yu, “Treating Triple Negative Breast Cancer in Brain Metastasis using P-selectin Targeting Nanoparticles” (Professor Daniel Heller)
- Peyton Carpen, “Impact of Calorie Restriction on Bone Marrow Stromal/Stem Cell Lineage Differentiation” (Professor Baohong Zhao)
Second Place:
- Austin Varela, “Harnessing Intrinsic Variability within the Tumor Microenvironment to Explainably Determine Cellular Communication” (Professor Ashley Laughney)
- Carolyn Ton, “Living Origami: How Cell Behaviors Drive Neural Tube Closure” (Professor Jennifer Zallen)
- Sarah Sheridan, “Effect of NKD1 Knockdown on Colorectal Cancer Cell Proliferation” (Professor David Scheinberg)
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
First Place:
- Hailey Goldberg, “A Nanoparticle-Based Platform for the Treatment of Senescence-Related Pathologies” (Professor Scott Lowe)
Second Place:
- Patrick Wallisch, “Interrogating the CD47-SIRP Axis in Chronic T Cell Stimulation to Translate Novel GvHD Therapies” (Professor David Scheinberg)
- Moniquetta Shafer, “What Makes Methylmalonic Acid? Identifying and Characterizing the Functions of an Understudied Oncometabolite-Producing Enzyme” (Professor John Blenis)
Oral Presentation Awards
First Place:
- Madison Darmofal, “Deep Learning Model for Tumor Type Prediction using Targeted Clinical Genomic Sequencing Data” (Professor Michael Berger, Professor Quaid Morris)
- Stephen Ruiz, “A Redox Stress-Modulated Phospholipase A2 Remodels Lipids to Regulate Ferroptosis in Cancer” (Professor Daniel Heller)
Second Place:
- Celeste Parra Bravo, “Human iPSC 4R Tauopathy Model Uncovers Modifiers of Tau Propagation” (Professor Li Gan)
2023
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
- Vigneshwari Easwar Kumar, “Regulation of Epigenetic Repression by Macromolecular Interactions.” PI Yicheng Long.
- Stephanie W. Tam, “Investigating New Small-Molecule Inhibitors of ICMT.” PI Stephen B. Long.
- Ian McBain, “Tissue Specific NK Cells Exhibit Functional Differences.” PI Joseph Sun.
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
- Winson Cai, “Antigen-Independent Targeting Lysis of Cancer Cells with LIGHT-CAR T Cells.” PI David A. Scheinberg.
- Anvita Singaraju, “CD38hi Cytotoxic CD8 T Cells are Expanded Following Checkpoint Blockade and Characterize the T Cell Infiltrate in Checkpoint Inhibitor-Associated Arthritis.” PI Laura Donlin.
- Rachel Payne, “Development of a PSMA Heterogeneous Tumor Model for Targeted Radiotherapy.” PI Jason S. Lewis.
Oral Presentation Awards
- Ying Xue Xie, “Lysosomal Exocytosis Releases Pathogenic α-Synuclein Species from Neurons.” PI Manu Sharma.
- Annalise Schweickart, “Profiling the Metabolomic Effects of the Ketogenic Diet and Elucidating their Role in Health and Disease Outcomes.” PI Jan Krumsiek.
- Kathleen A. M. Mills, “Epithelial-Immune Cell Crosstalk Orchestrates Pulmonary Immunity to Aspergillus Fumigatus.” PI Tobias M. Hohl.
2022
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
- Margarida Rosa, “Lipid Scrambling Mechanisms of β1-adrenergic Receptor (β1AR) Revealed by Computational Experiments.” PI George Khelashvili.
- Patrick Wallisch, “Engineering Synthetic Enzyme Armed Killer (SEAKER) Cells for the Treatment of Solid Human Tumors.” PI David Scheinberg.
- Brittney Bobowski, “H1 Involved in Recruitment to ssDNA as a Possible DNA Damage Response.” PI Yael David.
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
- Thasin Peyear, “Screening for Lipid Bilayer-Modifying Compounds Using Gramicidin-based Simulation Assays: A Scaffold Based Approach.” PI Olaf Andersen.
- Annalise Schweickart, “AutoFocus: A Hierarchical Framework to Explore Multi-omic Disease Associations Spanning Multiple Scales of Biomolecular Interaction.” PI Jan Krumsiek.
- Kate Dunmore, “Elucidating the Role of E2F Transcription Factors in Advanced Prostate Cancer.” PI David Rickman.
Oral Presentation Awards
- Dianne Lumaquin, “Lipid Droplets are a Metabolic Vulnerability in Melanoma.” PI Richard White.
- Anoushka Joglekar, “A Cell-Type Centric View of Isoform Expression Reveals Combination Patterns of Transcript Elements Across Brain Regions and Development.” PI Hagen Tilgner.
- Helene Jahn, “Oligomers of the Beta Barrel Protein VDAC Scramble Phospholipids at the Outer Membrane for Efficient Lipid Import into Mitochondria.” PI Anant Menon.
2021
Poster Presentation Awards- First Year
- Thasin Peyear, “The Time Course of Amphiphile Translocation Across Lipid Bilayers.” PI Olaf Andersen.
- Nicholas Bartelo, “Predicting Risk of Disease Progression for Pre-diabetic Patients.” PI Olivier Elemento.
- Tran Hoang, “Detecting EGFR Expression in Bladder Cancer Using [89Zr]Zr-DFO-Panitumumab immunoPET imaging.” PI Jason Lewis.
Poster Presentation Awards- Second Year And Above
- Anthony Antonelli, “Mycobacterium bovis BCG Induces CD4 T Cell-Dependent Tumor Immunity Against Bladder Cancer via Tumor-Intrinsic Interferon Gamma Signaling.” PI Michael Glickman.
- Robert Myers, “A Single-Cell Multiomic Investigation of JAK2 V617F Mutant Myeloproliferative Neoplasms.” PI Dan-Avi Landau.
- Katherine Lopez, “Maternal Postpartum Exercise Mitigates the Metabolic Cost of a Fat Rich Diet.” PI Miklos Toth.
- Jessica Falci, “Novel Autophagy Activators for Aggregated Tau Degradation.” PI Yueming Li.
Oral Presentation Awards
- Bobbie Pelham-Webb, “The Molecular Resetting of Pluripotent Stem Cell Identity during Mitotic Exit.” PI Effie Apostolou.
- Aleksandr Talishinsky, “Distinct Transcriptomic Signatures Predict Sexually Dimorphic Connectivity Changes in Depression.” PI Conor Liston.
- Tomer Yaron, "Phosphorylation of SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid Protein Selectively Regulates Viral and Host RNA-Protein Binding and is Essential for Viral Infection.” PI Olivier Elemento and PI Lewis Cantley.
- Alexandra Miller, “A Novel Reporter System Identifies Iron Uptake Virulence Genes in Mycobacteria.” PI Sabine Ehrt.