Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology Graduate Program. Bryce is interested in how the behaviors mediating cleaning mutualisms – interspecies interactions in which cleaner shrimp remove and consume ectoparasites located on “client” fish – vary and what this variation may mean for the outcomes and overall stability of these ecologically important interactions. His mentor is Eleanor Caves, PhD.

Mary Flordelys Dizon Avila, Pathobiology Graduate Program. Mary is employing a new strategy to discover and target mechanisms to treat Alzheimer’s disease. Her mentor is Gregorio Valdez, PhD.

Neuroscience Graduate Program. Hanna’s research explores how distinct subtypes of spinal cord neurons navigate through developing tissue to form the precise connections needed for normal nervous system function. Her mentor is Alexander Jaworski, PhD.

Neuroscience Graduate Program. Nell investigates the activity-dependent molecular mechanisms involved in strengthening the neuronal connections between the olfactory system and the hippocampus via their relay station, the lateral entorhinal cortex, to give rise to odor-place associations. Her mentor is Alexander Fleischmann, PhD.

Pathobiology Graduate Program. Owen’s research is investigating the possibility of using circulating micro-RNAs (tiny RNA molecules in the blood) to diagnose and predict clinical outcomes of patients with brain tumors, as well as the role these molecules may play in regulating the behavior of brain cancer stem cells. His mentor is Petra Klinge, MD, PhD. 

Pathobiology Graduate Program. Maddie uses microscopy and genetic manipulation to understand how the feeding structure in the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease, is formed and maintained. Her mentor is Christopher de Graffenried, PhD.

Computational Molecular Biology Graduate Program. Cecile builds artificial intelligence models that pull trustworthy, understandable insights from messy, incomplete biological and clinical data to track how malaria drug resistance spreads, which has informed World Health Organization policy, and to combine clinical and wearable-device data to better predict blood health markers. Her mentor is Jeffrey Bailey, MD, PhD.

Camila Molina, Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry Graduate Program. Camila's research focuses on elucidating the allosteric regulation of the DNA cleavage mechanism by CRISPR-Cas12a and using this information to intuitively engineer a hyper-active variant of Cas12a. Her mentor is George Lisi, PhD.