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
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.