James Elia, chief graduate student for the Pathology and Molecular Medicine PhD program, was recently awarded a prestigious Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral Individual National Research Service Award (F31) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The title of his project is, “Exploiting Homologous Recombination Defects with a Novel DNA-Crosslinking Strategy.”
Elia is a doctoral candidate in the lab of Ranjit S. Bindra, MD, PhD, where his research focuses on the development of novel DNA-damaging agents to target tumor-specific DNA repair deficiencies. He received his BS in Biology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Commonwealth Honors College with a minor in chemistry.
F31 funding awards from the NIH are designed to help promising predoctoral students develop into productive, independent research scientists through mentored research training while conducting dissertation research.