UMass Chan Medical School PhD candidate Kathleen Morrill is one of 12 recipients nationally selected for the 2023 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award. The Weintraub Award recognizes graduate students in the life sciences on the basis of the quality, originality and significance of their work. David Weaver, PhD, professor of neurobiology, nominated Morrill for her research on the behavioral genomics…
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Uchida Lab Postdoc Iku Kimura Receives Funding from Japan Science and Technology Agency

Postdoc Iku Kimura of the Uchida Lab has been awarded a prestigious fellowship from the Japan Science and Technology Agency. The fellowship program, named “Promoting Individual Research to Nurture Seeds of the Future” (PRESTO), supports early career Japanese researchers as they pursue high-impact basic research.
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The 2023 Gruber Genetics Prize is being awarded to molecular biologists Allan Jacobson, PhD, of UMass Chan Medical School, and Lynne Maquat, PhD, of the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry, for their contributions in identifying and describing the mechanism of nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD). This complex cellular pathway targets mRNA transcripts containing premature stop codons for degradation,…
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Seven Harvard Medical School researchers have received awards from the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. Two of the these are among the 14 early-career researchers named Damon Runyon Fellows. The four-year fellowship encourages promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($260,000 total) to investigate cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention.
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UMass Chan Medical School has signed a three-year sponsored research agreement with NeuShen Therapeutics Inc. to investigate a gene therapy treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a rare neurological disease. Based in Shanghai and Boston, NeuShen is focused on developing innovative treatments for central nervous system disorders using adeno-associated virus-based gene therapy and small molecule delivery. Jun Xie, PhD, associate professor…
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Awards & Recognitions: January 2023

Two HMS scientists were among 14 early career researchers named Damon Runyon Fellows by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. The four-year fellowship encourages promising young scientists to pursue careers in cancer research by providing them with independent funding ($260,000 total) to investigate cancer causes, mechanisms, therapies, and prevention.
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David Keener, a PhD candidate in the Morningside Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program, has received a Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Individual Predoctoral Fellowship from the National Institute for Neurological Diseases and Stroke. The grant will help fund Keener’s project on Rett syndrome, a genetic neurodevelopmental disease generally diagnosed in girls 6 to 18 months old that eventually…
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Three UMass Chan Medical School researchers are receiving awards from the American Macular Degeneration Foundation as part of the nonprofit’s $1.1 million investment into studies aimed at disease prevention, risk reduction, new treatments and cures for age-related macular degeneration. Claudio Punzo, PhD, associate professor of ophthalmology & visual sciences; Johanna Seddon, MD, ScM, professor of ophthalmology & visual sciences; and…
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Imagine being able to watch the smallest units of life—like cells and molecules—working together in real time. Seeing and measuring biological processes, a field called dynamic imaging, can help scientists unlock tremendous knowledge for treating diseases, from cancer to Alzheimer’s.  In an effort to take biological imaging to the next level, two Boston University College of Engineering researchers are spearheading…
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