Eighteen undergraduate students in the Department of Biochemistry have received 2022 campus awards for research and scholarly excellence. The students are a mix of talented biochemistry majors and students who perform research in laboratories run by biochemistry faculty. A list of these campus awards and the student winners is below.
Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowships
Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowships support undergraduate research done in collaboration with a faculty or staff member. To help offset research costs, the student receives $3,000 and the faculty or staff member $1,000.
- James Alvin, biochemistry, economics and neurobiology
- Faculty advisor: Anjon Audhya, biomolecular chemistry
- Project title: “Investigating Transcriptional Changes in Upper Motor Neuron Disease”
- Allison Czora, genetics & genomics and statistics
- Faculty advisor: Robert Landick
- Project title: “The Role of CarD in the Stringent Response in Zymomonas mobilis”
- Ryan Hagle, biochemistry
- Junsu Kang, cell and regenerative biology
- Project title: “Efficient Minicircle Strategy to Generate scn8ab Knock-In Reporter Zebrafish for Fin Regeneration”
- Ziling Hu, computer sciences, data science and mathematics
- Faculty advisor: Chad Rienstra
- Project title: “FAMsim: a Transformative Approach to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) Spectroscopy Protein Structure Determination”
- Mae Ellen Hurtado-Thiele, genetics and genomics
- Faculty advisor: Judi Simcox
- Project title: “Acylcarnitine Induced Insulin Resistance and Inflammation in Brown Fat Adipose Tissue”
- Jenna Kiraly, biochemistry
- Craig Berridge, psychology
- Project title: “Role of Glutamatergic CRF Neurons in PFC-Dependent Cognition”
- Ruojia Li, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: AJ Boydston, chemistry
- Project title: “Exploring the Effects of Acetate Anion on Initiator Efficiency in Metal-Free Ring-Opening Polymerization”
- MaryGrace Linsley, biochemistry and Spanish
- Faculty advisor: Judith Kimble
- Project title: “Impact of Protein-Protein Interactions on a Conserved Cell Fate Regulator”
- Jasmine Machhi, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Silvia Cavagnero, chemistry
- Project title: “Experimental Studies on Protein Remodeling upon Interaction with the Hsp70 Molecular Chaperone”
- Marshal McGauley, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Lynn Schnapp, medicine
- Project title: “Role of uPARAP in the Mouse Lung Fibroblast Cell Cycle”
- Raveena Mishra, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Amgad Hanna, neurological surgery
- Project title: “Reducing Secondary Damage after Spinal Cord Injury”
- Joana Pashaj, biochemistry and Latin
- Faculty advisor: Ci Ji Lim
- Project title: “Understanding how Human Shelterin Proteins Help Telomerase Navigate the Long Repetitive Telomeric Maze: A Single-Molecule Imaging Approach”
Sophomore Research Fellowships
Funded by generous grants from the Brittingham Wisconsin Trust and the Kemper K. Knapp Bequest, the Sophomore Research Fellowships provide $2,500 each to undergraduate students and $500 to their faculty or staff advisors to work in collaboration on research projects.
- Hunter Coplien, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Zach Wickens, chemistry
- Project title: “Electrochemical Aromatic C-H Functionalization by Thianthrene”
- Adam Eckardt, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Masatoshi Suzuki, comparative biosciences
- Project title: “Defining New Roles of Bet1L for Neuromuscular Junction Integrity and Motor Neuron Survival in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)”
- Christine Glitchev, biochemistry and neurobiology
- Faculty advisor: Deric Wheeler, human oncology
- Project title: “Dual Targeting FGFR1 and MerTK as a Novel Therapeutic Approach in Triple Negative Breast Cancer”
- Ivy Lucier, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Michael Thomas, bacteriology
- Project title: “Directed Evolution of Substrate Specificity in NRPS Enzyme EntF”
- Niharika Patankar, biochemistry and music
- Faculty advisor: Jenny Gumperz, medical microbiology and immunology
- Project title: “Investigating the Role of Metabolism on iNKT Cell Cytokine Production”
- Natalie Zeps, biochemistry
- Faculty advisor: Aaron Hoskins
- Project title: “Determining the Role of Rds3 in Intron Recognition and its Modulation by Small Molecules”