Assistant professor of biochemistry Aaron Hoskins has received the 2018 Pound Research Award from the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (CALS) at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
The award is supported by an educational development fund created to honor CALS Dean Glenn S. Pound upon his retirement in 1979. It is given to honor an outstanding, early-career CALS research scientist and to promote continued excellence in research.
“It is a great honor to be recognized with this award for young investigators,” Hoskins says. “A lot of credit for this goes to the wonderful students and scientists who have worked in my laboratory as well as my mentors and collaborators here at UW–Madison.”
Hoskins’s research program focuses on RNA processing by a cellular machine known as the spliceosome — an essential step in gene expression in plants and animals. The spliceosome processes RNA before it’s translated, removing parts of the RNA that are not needed and splicing together other regions. The Hoskins Lab studies this finely tuned process using Baker’s yeast as a model system.
His lab’s research seeks to understand the basic science of spliceosome assembly and RNA processing. However, they also have an interest in diseases such as cancers caused by errors in the spliceosome’s activities.
Hoskins has been with the department since August 2011. He has previously received both a Shaw Scientist Award from the Great Milwaukee Foundation and a Beckman Young Investigator Award. In his laboratory he has mentored many graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and more than 25 undergraduate students.