Monthly Archives: August 2021

Mélise Edwards awarded HHMI Gilliam fellowship

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Congratulations to Mélise Edwards and Agnès Lacreuse on being awarded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellowship! This award is given to outstanding graduate students and their advisers with the goal of supporting students from underrepresented groups in their pursuit in preparing for leadership roles in scientific fields, particularly with a focus on advancing diversity and inclusion in the sciences.

Only 50 pairs of students and their advisers were selected for the 2021 Gilliam Fellowship program. They span 38 academic institutions across the country with research ranging from life sciences to biomed.

Through this Fellowship Mélise and Professor Lacreuse have leadership and research training opportunities, with a focus on inclusion and cultural awareness with monthly online training sessions, two in-person workshops in Maryland, and an annual meeting of all Fellows and their advisers. They will also receive $50,000 per year up to 3 years. To be eligible for the program, Fellows must be enrolled in their 2nd or 3rd year of a PhD program in biomedical or life sciences, be from a racial, ethnic or other underrepresented group, and demonstrate a commitment to furthering inclusion and diversity in the field of science.

The NSB community is proud and excited and extends a group congratulations to both Mélise and Agnès!

ChangHui Pak and Gerry Downes awarded the Armstrong Fund for Science

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The Armstrong Fund for Science was established in 2006 by benefactors John and Elizabeth Armstrong to help research projects gain more ground before they are eligible for traditional grants. The 2021 award was given to Biology’s Gerald Downes, and MCB’s ChangHui Pak for their collaborative research into the disruption of brain development by the mutation of a gene, TBCK. Mutations of the gene cause a rare condition called TBCK Syndrome. Professors Pak and Downes will receive funding of $40,000 for 2 years for the preliminary research needed to prepare for a larger research project.

ChangHui and Gerry hope to learn more about how the mutations in the TBCK gene cause the debilitating syndrome which leads to a high rate of mortality in children and adolescents with progressive loss of muscle tone, intellectual disability, and drug-resistant epilepsy among some of the symptoms. The collaboration will involve the zebrafish that the Downes Lab has already engineered with TBCK syndrome. Pak will be using pluripotent stem cells that will be engineered with the mutations specific to TBCK syndrome, grow them into neurons and compare the mutated cells with healthy cells. They are both excited to work together learning from each model.

The entire neuroscience community extends an enthusiastic congratulations and will look forward to seeing the progress!