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Congratulations to Federal FY 2024 F31, F30, and AHA Awardees

The GSBS would like to acknowledge and congratulate the prestigious FY 2024  Individual Kirschstein National Research Service Award recipients, as well as our American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship recipient.  These remarkable achievements are a testament to each student’s dedication, perseverance, and the countless hours of hard work both they and their mentors have invested. This honor is a significant milestone and a well-deserved recognition of their potential to make impactful contributions to the field.

Dean David Weiss shared, “Congrats “funded” class of 2024! These fellowships are extremely competitive and stand as a testament to our highly-talented students and their dedicated mentors. And a shout out to the graduate programs and the key support from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs in the application preparation.” Notably, nearly 90% of the award recipients benefited from the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs’ F-Troop/Primer Training or received invaluable individual guidance from Dr. Babatunde Oyajobi during the application process. A heartfelt thank you to Dr. Oyajobi for his unwavering dedication and exceptional support in helping our students achieve this success!”


F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral

Individual National Research Service Award


Ashley Auerbach – NIAID (Reuben Harris)

Mentor Name: Reuben S. Harris

Program: IBMS PhD in MIM discipline

Research Topic: APOBECs are innate immune enzymes that function as virus restriction factors through their cytosine-to-uracil deaminase activity on single-stranded DNA. APOBEC3B (A3B) is the only member of the APOBEC3 family to be constitutively nuclear. Additionally, A3B has been implicated in restricting several DNA-based viruses with the most compelling evidence to-date being a role for this enzyme in blocking herpesvirus infection. Previous studies from our lab have identified an A3B neutralization mechanism in which a single herpesvirus protein directly binds, inhibits, and relocalizes A3B from the nucleus to the cytoplasm. Therefore, the unique nuclear localization of A3B is predicted to be essential for its beneficial function as a virus restriction factor. However, the mechanism of A3B trafficking to the nucleus is currently unknown and remains elusive. My thesis research focuses on understanding the mechanism of A3B nuclear localization and determining how subcellular localization alters the DNA mutating activity of this antiviral enzyme.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: It’s important to know your audience. I recommend doing some research on the funder before applying so that you can tailor your proposal to their needs. Before you start writing you should understand the funding source and what research mission it serves. Then, you will be better equipped to convince reviewers of how your project is an excellent fit for the program and how it helps the funder achieve their goals.

Marisol Morales – NIAID (Yan Xiang)

Mentor Name: Yan Xiang

Program: Integrative Biomedical Sciences PhD Program

Research Topic: Poxviruses have long posed a threat to human and animal health, and dangerous virulent strains are presently emerging. Innate host factors SAMD9 and SAMD9L pose barriers that poxviruses must overcome for productive infection, but the molecular mechanism by which they exert their anti-viral effect is not well understood. My research involves using vaccinia virus to identify the pathogen-associated molecular patterns that activate SAMD9&9L, as well as the protein domains involved in their anti-viral activity. Understanding how SAMD9&9L regulate poxvirus infection will help develop effective antiviral strategies against future poxvirus outbreaks.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: Your accomplishments as a graduate student heavily contribute to the success of your application. Try to take advantage of every opportunity early on to present at a conference or become an author on a paper to build up your biosketch and become a more competitive applicant. Also, give yourself plenty of time to write the application because it takes longer than you think. You got this!!!

 

Claira Sohn -NIA

Mentor Name: Dr. Bess Frost

Program: Integrated Biomedical Sciences (IBMS)

Research Topic: Our research lab focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms behind pathological tau that drives neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s disease. Within this topic, my project focuses on how pathological tau drives changes in the neurons ability to undergo mechanotransduction. Within this project, I have observed that the nuclei of neurons harboring pathological tau have a decrease in tension along the nuclear envelope. This finding coincides well with previous findings that neurons harboring pathological tau have heterochromatin decondensation and nucleoskeletal deficits. In addition, I have identified an upregulation of the mechanosensitive protein emerin is increased in neurons harboring pathological tau. My F-grant is focused on understanding this molecular mechanism of this emerin increase at the protein level in neurons harboring pathological tau, and what this means for the mechanosensitivity of the nuclei within these neurons.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: Take F-troop with Dr. Oyajobi and really take advantage of that time with him. Have your documents ready for each meeting time and go over them with him. He is an amazing resource and is more than willing to help each one of us with our grants. Each suggestion he made on my documents only strengthened my grant, and I am very grateful for his support.

Erich Sohn – NCI (David Libich)

Mentor Name: David Libich

Program: IBMS, BMM

Research Topic: Ewing Sarcoma is a pediatric bone and soft tissue cancer that is driven by the oncogenic fusion between the EWS low complexity domain and FLI1 DNA-binding domain. The resulting oncogenic transcription factor, EWS::FLI1, drives aberrant gene expression and disrupts numerous cellular processes that results in oncogenesis. My project focuses on understanding the self-associative behavior of the EWS low complexity domain, which is crucial for EWS::FLI1’s oncogenic properties. Specifically, we are investigating the structural basis for EWS low complexity domain interdomain self-association, how these interactions contribute to the functions of wildtype EWS in transcriptional regulation and DNA repair, and how these interactions are hijacked by EWS::FLI1 to drive oncogenesis.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: Attend F-Troop! And, take both your grant writing and F-Troop seriously. It is a lot of work to submit a training grant, and if you don’t put a serious effort into it, your time will be wasted. Even unsuccessful grant submissions can be valuable experiences if a genuine effort is put into the grant. There is no better way to take your grant submission seriously than to attend and engage in the F-Troop grant writing workshop put together by Dr. Kay Oyajobi, which is primarily focused on F grant submissions, but is useful for any training grant. Dr. Oyajobi has put in an immense amount of effort into making this course as impactful as possible, and he helped me navigate the grant writing process, as well as tailor my grant to meet the expectations of the NIH and grant reviewers. This is an amazing resource that is available to you, but you must engage in the course; passively attending is not taking your grant submission seriously and will diminish value of your time.


F30 Ruth L. Kirschstein Individual Predoctoral

NRSA for MD/​PhD and other Dual Degree Fellowships


Anne Wells – NIMH

Student Profile

Mentor Name: Noboru Hiroi, PhD

Program: STX-MSTP (MD-PhD) Program, IBMS Neuroscience

Research Topic : Anne Wells is a graduate student in the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program (MD/PhD Program) studying functional genomic properties of neuropsychiatric diseases under the mentorship of Noboru Hiroi, PhD. For her research, Anne is studying the neurodevelopmental role of Tbx1, a gene within a commonly deleted segment of 22q11.2 gene locus, as a driver gene for cognitive deficits seen across neuropsychiatric diseases, and its effect on downstream target FoxG1, a critical gene for myelination of the forebrain. For her clinical specialty, Anne is considering pursuing neuropsychiatry.

Advice to students applying for similar grants:

The F30 is an NIH training grant, very similar to the F31. The goal of training grans is to invest in an individual who demonstrated great promise as an independent scientist, and for F30 grant specifically, an independent physician-scientist. A common misconception is that these grants prioritize funding science, like R01 grants. Science is a secondary outcome. Training is the priority. So, shape your grant, including your Research Strategy, around training. To put numbers to it, 96/102 pages of my grant document were about training and training support. More importantly, I received a 3rd percentile score and was successfully funded. If you think the science is the most important part of an F-level grant, you’re wrong.

Start early! Plan to have to spend a good amount of time learning about the background of your project and shaping the aims, but also for what NIH grants are, how funding works, and the components you will need to write for the grant.

On that note, attend Primer for F-Troop at least one semester before you attend F-Troop as you are writing. Dr. Kay Oyajobi runs both programs and they are a phenomenal source of solid information and advice for shaping training grants based on student success/failures.

Read other students’ training grants – both funded and not funded – to get a sense of what the documents and sections could look like. If they were scored, ask to see the score report to know how study sections are reviewing the grants, what they are critical of, and what they really like to see.

Jan Simper -NIAID 

Student Profile

Mentor Name: Larry Schlesinger, M.D.

Program: Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics

Research Topic: Alveolar macrophages are a critical cell population that have an important role in healthy lung function and lipid metabolism while also being the main cellular niche for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB), a significant global health problem. We use a novel model for human alveolar macrophages to investigate an understudied class of transcription factors linked to macrophage function and TB infection. We seek to determine the role of the NR4A family of nuclear receptors in macrophage function and host defense against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in order to deepen our understanding of AM biology and aid in identification of novel targets for host- directed therapies against TB.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: Join the F-Troop class and have as many people look over your application as you can, and look at the NIH’s examples of successful past applications, but don’t feel like you have to listen to every piece of advice. Keep your F grant achievable and detailed in what you plan to do, with justification from your preliminary data. If you have to reapply, which is very common, make sure you address each critique. Remember that a large part of your competitiveness comes from your training, so make sure your mentorship plan is solid and add information about how your environment will help you succeed.

Rolando Garza – NIAID 

Student Profile

Mentor Name: Evelien Bunnik, Ph.D.

Program: Molecular Immunology and Microbiology

 

 

 

 


F30 Ruth L. Kirschstein Individual Predoctoral

NIDCR for DDS/DMD-PhD students


Josue Murillo

Mentor Name: Dr. Nikita Ruparel

Program: DDS/PhD

Research Topic: Stem-cell induced pain relief is a field of study that has shown much promise in relieving pain associated with migraines and osteoarthritis. However, there are still many questions about how stem-cells can be used to treat dental related pain. My current research focuses on unraveling the mechanism of mesenchymal stem cell induced analgesia in a model of apical periodontitis.

Advice to students applying for similar grants: Take F-troop!! It makes the grant process very approachable.

 


American Heart Association (AHA) Predoctoral Fellowship Award


Bowen Yang

LinkedIn

Mentor Name: Dr. Geoffrey D. Clarke

Program: Biomedical Engineering

Research Topic: Since the 1970s, synthetic glucocorticoids (sGC) have been given to women at risk of preterm labor to support fetal lung development. While these treatments are lifesaving, recent research points to potential long-term cardiovascular (CV) impacts. A current study uses a baboon model, closely mirroring human physiology, to explore these effects. Prior findings reveal that offspring exposed to sGC in utero may exhibit early heart disease, metabolic issues, and cognitive changes. This research investigates how sGC influences heart function and gene expression over time, aiming to uncover a possible link between prenatal steroids and later-life CV disease. Findings from this study could impact glucocorticoid guidelines for pregnant women by weighing short-term benefits against potential lifelong CV risks.

Advice to Students Applying for Similar Grants: Start by thoroughly reviewing all grant instructions and reach out to your institution’s grant office for guidance. Seeking feedback from peers, postdocs, and faculty provides varied perspectives that can significantly strengthen your proposal. Connecting with past award recipients for advice over coffee can also be incredibly insightful, offering strategies and highlighting potential pitfalls to avoid.

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