After a competitive selection process, we are pleased to announce six excellent recipients for this year’s The Kenneth and Paula Munson Family Fund for Student Support in Health Science Fellowship, in the amount of $1,000. Congratulations to:

Yetunde Akinlaja, Department of Physiology and Neurobiology

Kate Denegre, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

Nadine Lebek, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology

Rachael Massey, Biomedical Science

Weizi Wu, School of Nursing

Yiming Zhang, Department of Computer Science and Engineering

The RNA Society Outstanding Career Researcher Award recognizes the exceptional contributions of career research scientists in advancing the field of RNA. The 2023 award goes to Sara Olson, who has been a key member in the laboratory of Dr. Brenton Graveley at the University of Connecticut for 21 years and has contributed to 38 published papers. During her career, she has spearheaded a number of important discoveries spanning a wide variety of RNA biology, including the alternative splicing mechanism of the Dscam gene, the characterization of recursive splicing and circular RNAs in Drosophila, the processing of CRISPR RNAs from a multi-cistronic precursor, and extensive characterization of the Drosophila and human transcriptomes as part of the modENCODE, ENCODE and ENCORE collaborative projects. In addition to making key scientific contributions in the Graveley lab, Ms. Olson oversees the DNA sequencing and ancillary equipment within the department, and is responsible for training all personnel on the use of the equipment

Follow this link for the full UConn Today article.

Click here to view the job description and application.

This program, first of its kind at a public university in New England, is housed in the Institute for Systems Genomics.

Follow this link for the full UConn Today article.
The direct website to the Genetic Counseling Program can be found here: https://geneticcounseling.uconn.edu/

BEST POSTER:
Purkinje Cell Heterogeneity Orchestrates Mammalian Cerebellar Development
Presenter name: Nagham Khouri-Farah, PhD Candidate
Affiliated Lab: Li and Cotney Labs, Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, UConn Health

MOST CREATIVE POSTER:
Unique Centromeres & Telomeres in Phased Telomere-to-Telomere Assemblies of Male and Female Tammar Wallabies
Presenter Name: Patrick G.S. Grady, PhD Candidate
Affiliated Lab: R. O’Neill Lab, Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, UConn

Congratulations for having your figure on the cover of the October issue and being chosen as “Editor’s pick!”

PLCβ2 Promotes VEGF-Induced Vascular Permeability
Kathryn N. Phoenix, Zhichao Yue, Lixia Yue, Chunxia G. Cronin, Bruce T. Liang, Luke H. Hoeppner and Kevin P. Claffey
Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 2022 | Volume 42, Issue 10: 1229–1241, originally published July 21, 2022,
https://doi.org/10.1161/ATVBAHA.122.317645

The Biodiversity and Conservation Genomics Center (https://genomics.institute.uconn.edu/biodiversity/) within the Institute for Systems Genomics provides undergraduate and graduate level training through partnerships among UConn CLAS departments – EEB, MCB, and MARN.  Undergraduates participate in a one year program that will sequence, assemble, and annotate an IUCN red-list species with partial support from Oxford Nanopore.  The students will continue their study at the population level, working directly with practitioners to bridge the conservation genomics gap.

Graduate students and Postdocs in participating labs provide hands-on training and participate in the development of the first conservation genomics seminar.  In partnership with the Computational Biology Core within the ISG, faculty and students are developing reproducible workflows for genome assembly/annotation, variant detection, and population genetics/landscape genetics.

Together, we are developing expertise within UConn, and partnerships outside of UConn, to support education, research, and outreach in conservation genomics across disparate disciplines.