Etcetera

Regina Faulkner Wins NIH National Research Service Award
Regina Faulkner, a research associate in the Cline lab, was recently awarded a National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Research Service Award (NRSA) three-year postdoctoral fellowship.

According to the NIH, the fellowships are intended to provide research training opportunities for individuals interested in pursuing research careers in biomedical, behavioral, and clinical research. NIH figures indicate only about 10 percent of applicants are awarded an NRSA award each year.

Faulkner's project, entitled "Experience-dependent development of neural circuits in the Xenopus visual system," is focused on understanding how neural circuits develop and elucidating the role of activity in this process.

Joshua Payette Awarded American Cancer Society Fellowship
Joshua Payette, a research associate in the Schultz lab, was awarded a three-year American Cancer Society (ACS) fellowship for his work on anti-cancer therapies.

According to the organization, ACS fellowships support the training of researchers who have received a doctoral degree to provide initial funding leading to an independent career in cancer research.

Payette's work focuses on a new approach for the discovery of anti-cancer therapies, using unnatural amino acid mutagenesis in tandem with phage display to generate libraries of cyclic peptide drug candidates.

Jonathan Swoboda Receives Diabetes Fellowship
Jonathan Swoboda, a research associate in the Schultz lab, has received a three-year fellowship from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). The JDRF awards fellowships and grants to qualified researchers interested in solving the clinical and scientific problems associated with type 1 diabetes.

Swoboda is interested in discovering small molecules capable of inducing proliferation of beta cells in vitro for transplantation to treat Type I diabetes.