Two Yale Department of Genetics graduate students were recently granted the Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31) from the National Institutes of Health. Adan Codina from the Chen lab and Delfina Gonzalez from the Khokha lab join three current F31 fellowship students in the department, Daniel Burkhardt from the Kishnaswamy lab and Alexandra Garfinkel and Vaughn Colleluori, both from the Khokha lab.
The F31 fellowship is awarded to predoctoral students in ongoing supervised research within health-related fields. Gonzalez studies the role of a protein called Auxilin in brain patterning and development. Codina uses high throughput CRISPR Cas9 screening to identify genes that regulate liver cancer and melanoma tumor formation and immunity. “Understanding human genetics is the key to eradicating many human diseases, including all kinds of cancer. This understanding combined with novel gene and cell-based therapies will give us the power to cure diseases, ranging from cancers to muscular dystrophy,” says Codina. He will be using the award to attend conferences in his field and support his research.
Garfinkel, Colleluori, and Burkhardt have already begun to benefit from the award. Garfinkel has attended numerous conferences and will be going to the Alavian lab at Imperial College London for collaboration using equipment not available at Yale—a unique instrument that enables the measurement of oxygen in real time spatially in whole living embryos. Like Garfinkel, Colleluori will also be traveling, attending the International Wnt Conference in Japan where she will both present her work as well as learn and discuss new Wnt research. Burkhardt has also made excellent use of the travel allowance, presenting his work at conferences including Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and Next Generation Genomics.
Ultimately, what unites the five recipients is their passion and excitement at the intersection of genetics and health. “I am aware that my research has immediate implications in the treatment of genetic disease, such as congenital heart disease, while also being able to fulfill my scientific curiosity by delving deep into unknown developmental mechanisms,” reflects Colleluori. “In the Khokha lab, all of our projects are driven by patients and motivated by our ability to help physicians optimize and personalize the care they provide to their patients,” adds Garfinkel.