Outstanding Thesis Research Award Winners

In recognition of a graduate whose research findings, in the judgement of the faculty and the Dean, has significant impact in their field.

2021

Zachary Milstone
Histone Deacetylase 1 and 2 are Essential for Early Cardiac Development
Mentor: Chinmay Trivedi, MD, PhD

Erica Mondo
Investigating Microglia -Vascular Interactions in the Developing and Adult Central Nervous System
Mentor: Dorothy Schafer, PhD

2020

Mona Motwani
Cytosolic DNA Sensing in Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Diseases
Mentor: Kate Fitzgerald, PhD

Pranitha Vangala 
Role of CIS-Regulatory Elements in Transcriptional Regulation:  From Evolution to 4D Interactions
Mentor: Manuel Garber, PhD

2019

Maximiliaan Huisman
Vision Beyond Optics:  Standardization, Evaluation and Innovation for Fluorescencemicroscopy in Life Sciences
Mentor: David Grunwald, PhD

Harish Palleti Janardhan
Histone Deacetylase 3 (HDAC3) Regulates Lymphatic Vascular Development
Mentor: Chinmay Trivedi, MD, PhD

2018

Mehmet Fatih Bolukbasi 
Development of Chimeric CAS9 Nucleases for Accurate and Flexible Genome Editing
Mentor: Scot Wolfe, PhD

Reka Haraszti 
Engineered Exosomes for Delivery of Therapeutic siRNAs to Neurons
Mentor: Anastasia Khvorova, PhD

2017

Hatem Elif Kamber Kaya
Regulation of the Drosophila Initiator Caspase DRONC through Ubiquitylation
Mentor: Andreas Bergmann, PhD 

Yihang Li
Mechanisms of Synaptic Development and Premature Aging in Drosophila
Mentor: Vivian Budnik, PhD

2016

Bryan Lajoie
Computational approaches for analysis of chromosome conformation capture data and their application to study long-range gene regulation
Mentor: Job Dekker, PhD 

Margaret Heider
Investigating the architecture and vesicle tethering function of the exocyst complex
Mentor: Mary Munson, PhD

2015

Laura Danai
Role of protein kinase Map4k4 in energy metabolism
Mentor: Michael Czech, PhD

Po-shen Chen
Regulation of embryonic stem cell pluripotency by the Tip60-p400 chromatic remodeling complex
Mentor: Thomas Fazzio, PhD