Medical Student Competition

Gold Prize Winner:  Dmitriy Peresada (Orthopaedics)
Title: “The importance of patellar button positioning in total knee arthroplasty”
Co-Authors: Farid Amirouche, Giovanni Francesco Solitro, Mark Gonzalez

Silver Medal honors: Kimberly Hu (Neurosurgery)
Title: “Classification of Thalamic Hemorrhages using a Six-Category Zoning Scheme”
Co-Authors: Brandon Neisewander, Zachary Tan, Jack ZakrzewskI, Ankit Mehta

Honorable Mentions:

Jonathan Lee (Medicine)
Title:  “Combined Immune Score of Lymphocyte to Monocyte Ratio and Immunoglobulin Levels Predicts Progression-Free Survival of Myeloma Patients after Autologous Transplant”
Co-Authors: Karen Sweiss, Annie L. Oh, Gregory Sampang Calip, Nadim Mahmud

Abhiraj Bhimani (Neurosurgery)
Title:  “Magnetic Drug Targeting: A Novel Treatment for High-grade Intramedullary Spinal Cord Tumors”
Co-Authors: Pouyan Kheirkhah, Steven Denyer, Darian Esfahani, Ankit Mehta

Manual Fernandez (College of Medicine) 
Title: “High cytotoxic lymphocyte to tumor-associated macrophage ratio is associated with decreased recurrence of colorectal cancer”
Co-Authors: David Rosenberg, Ajay Maker

Felicia Sun (Neurosurgery)
Title: “Gender Differences in Traumatic Brain Injury: Gendered Atrophy Implicated In Chronic Symptomology”
Co-Authors: Maheen Adamson

Jack Zakrzewski (Neurosurgery):
Title: “Novel Use of Targeted Magnetic Nanoparticles as Potential Treatment of Prostate Cancer Metastasis to the Vertebral Spinal Column”
Co- Authors: Steven Papastefan, Steven Denyer, Abhiraj Bhimani, Ankit Mehta

Alex Park (Medicine)
 Title: “Concomitant TGFBR1 and PD-1 Inhibition Enhances Anti-Tumor Cytotoxicity in Advanced Pancreatic Cancer”
Co- Authors: Daniel Principe, Carolina Torres, Matthew Dorman, Ronald McKinney, Ajay Rana, Paul Grippo Jung

Luke Zabawa (Orthopaedic Surgery) 
Title:  “Patient Dissatisfaction Following Total Knee Arthroplasty: External Validation of a New Prediction Model”
Co- Authors: Keren Li, Samuel Chmell

Ravand Samaeekia (Medicine) 
Title:  “The Effect of Human Corneal-Derived Mesenchymal Stromal Cells Secretome on Corneal Epithelial Wound Healing”
Co- Authors: Medi Eslani, Ilham Putra, Behnam Rabiee,      Ali Djalilian

Flavius Beca  (College of Medicine) 
Title:  “An in vitro Study into Pathogenic Insulin Gene Mutations Which Disrupt the B20/A19 Disulfide Bond”
Co- Authors: Graeme Bell, Soo-Young Park

Graduate Student and MD-PhD Student Competition

Gold Medal honors:  Jugajyoti Baruah (Pharmacology)
Title: “Small Molecule, NP12, mitigates Myocardial Fibrosis and Restore Coronary Blood Supply”
Co-Authors: Ryan Hitzman, Suhnrita Chaudhuri, Victoria Mastej, Kishore Wary

Silver Medal honors: Ryan Clarke (Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics)
Title: “Enhanced bacterial immunity and mammalian genome editing via RNA polymerase-mediated dislodging of Cas9 from double strand DNA breaks”
Co-Authors: Robert Heler, Matthew S. MacDougall, Nan Cher Yeo, Alejandro Chavez, Maureen Regan, Leslyn Hanakahi, George M. Church, Luciano A. Marraffini, Bradley J. Merrill

Honorable Mentions:

Kilian Sottoriva (Pharmacology)
Title: “Targeting the Notch1 Transcriptional Activation Domain in T-Cell Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia”
Co-Authors: Lijian Shao, Kostandin Pajcini

Daniel Principe (Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics)
Title:  “Galunisertib Augments Immune Checkpoint Inhibition to Promote T Cell Clearance of Metastatic Pancreatic Cancer”
Co-Author: Alex Park, Carolina Torres, Matthew Dorman, Paul Grippo

Rachael Smith (Anatomy & Cell Biology)
Title: “Role of Lysosomal Autophagy in the Regional Deposition of Amyloid in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy”
Co-Author: Michael Marshall, Yazan Issa, Duc Nguyen, Ernesto Bongarzone

Tara McCray (Pathology)
Title: “Vitamin D Promotes Differentiation of Human Prostate Organoids in a microRNA-Dependent Manner”
Co-Authors: Giovanni Lugli, Larisa Nonn

Allison Kirchner (Neurology & Rehabilitation)
Title: “DUSP4 forms an endogenous, activity-dependent feedback loop in human epileptic brain”
Co-Authors: Shruti Bagla, Fabien Dachet, Jeffrey Loeb

Ryan Patwell – (Psychiatry)
Title: “A Novel Role for FGF21 Signaling in Alcohol Use Disorder”
Co-Authors:  Huaibo Zhang, Subhash C.Pandey

Tiffani Berkel – (Psychiatry)
Title: “Histone Methyltransferase, G9a, and its Epigenetic Manipulation of Rapid Ethanol Tolerance”
Co-Authors:  Huaibo Zhang, Tara Teppen, Subhash Pandey

Mark Shaaya –   (Pharmacology)
Title: “Engineered Allosteric Regulation of Protein Kinases by Light”
Co-Authors:  Vincent Huyot, Viswanathan Natarajan

Ahmed Metwally – (Bionengineering)
Title: “Pediatric Lung Transplant: Analysis of Lower Airway Virome”
Co-Authors:  Thomas Ferkol, Patricia Finn, David Perkins

Postdoctoral fellows and residents Competition

Gold Medal honors:  Deebika Balu (Anatomy & Cell Biology)
Title: “Toll-like receptor-4 antagonism as a therapeutic for AD-associated neuroinflammation”
Co-Authors: Jason York        , Jazmin Diaz, Nur Allababidi, Mary Jo LaDu

Silver Medal honors: Danika Bakke (Gastroeneterology and Hepatology)
Title: “Myeloid vitamin D receptor signaling regulates Paneth cell function and intestinal homeostasis”
Co-Authors: Rong Lu, Yongguo Zhang, Jun Sun

Honorable Mentions:

Dheeraj Soni (Pharmacology)
Title: “DUB activity of Endothelial A20 is essential for stabilizing VE-cadherin junctions after inflammatory lung injury”
Co-Authors: DongMei Wang, Sushil Regmi, Chhinaswamy Tiruppathi

Hao-Liang Xu (Pathology)
Title: “Correlation of stromal reactivity and heparanase expression in prostate adenocarcinoma”
Co-Authors: Osama Elfituri, Rami Hayajneh, Vicky Macias, Andre Kajdacsy-Balla

John Bohnsack (Psychiatry)
Title: “Novel role of the human long non-coding RNA BDNF-Antisense in early onset of alcohol use disorders”
Co-Authors: Svetlana Diztoyeva, Subhash Pandey

Natania Crane (Psychiatry)
Title: “Neural Response to Errors is Associated with Problematic Alcohol Use Over Time in Combat-Exposed Returning Veterans: An Event-Related Potential Study”
Co-Authors: Stephanie Gorka, Katie Burkhouse, Kaveh Afshar, K. Luan Phan

Anoop Kumar (Medicine)
Title: “Cryptosporidium parvum infection disrupts intestinal epithelial barrier function via decreasing expression of specific tight junction and adherens junction proteins”
Co-Authors:  Ishita Chatterjee, Arivarasu Natarajan, Pradeep Dudeja, Alip Borthakur

Harriet Gaskell – (Pathology)
Title: “The role of gut derived HMGB1 in the pathogenesis of Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH)”
Co-Authors:  Xiaodong Ge, Daniel Lantvit, Daniel Antoine, Natalia Nieto

Research Assistant Professors and Scientific Staff Competition

Gold Prize Winner:  Michelle Van Scoyk (Pulmonary, Critical Care, Sleep and Allergy)
Title: “Ras-like Estrogen-Regulated Growth-Inhibitory Gene (RERG): A Novel Biomarker and Potential Therapeutic Target for Women with Lung Cancer”
Co-Authors: Sreedevi Avasarala, Yanlin Su, Kamesh Bikkavilli, Robert Winn

Honorable Mentions:

Tyler Rivera (Emergency Medicine)
Title: “Hypertension Knowledge and Patient Engagement in a Hypertensive Minority Population Screened in Community Churches.”
Co-Authors: Sandra Escobar-Schulz, Maya Jackson, Marina Del Rios, Heather Prendergast

Apoorva Tummala (Medicine)
Title: “Impact of Dietary trans10 cis12 Conjugated Linoleic Acid on Hepatic Glucose and Lipid Metabolism in Adult Male Mice”
Co-Authors: Zachary White, Poorna Chandra Rao Yalagala, Sugasini Dhavamani, Jose Cordoba-Chacon, Toshiro Nagao, Rhonda D. Kineman, Papasani V. Subbaiah

Mohansrinivas Chennakesavalu (Anesthesiology)
Title: “Mesenchymal stem cell-derived extracellular vesicles in retinal ischemia”
Co-Authors Sriram Ravindran,        Jasmine Lopez, Leianne Torres, Steven Roth