Life and Health Sciences Research Day Award Winners

Congratulations on all our winners!

The Life and Health Sciences Research Day is an annual event designed to bring students studying in the life and health sciences together from across campus and provide them with the opportunity to present their research to a broad audience.  This year, the keynote address “Sign Posts and Stepping Stones in Graduate Research” was given by the College’s own Dr. Jane Alcorn.

College of Pharmacy and Nutrition graduate students were tremendously successful at this year’s 22ndAnnual Life & Health Science Research Day. We are very pleased to announce the following award winners: 

Paul Pown Raj Iyyanar, Pharmacy PhD

1st Place – Cell Biology

Hoxa2 regulates osteoblast differentiation during palate development

Paul Pown Raj Iyyanar, Adil Nazarali

 

Virginia Lane, Nutrition PhD

1st Place – Community Health II

Unpacking the health and nutritional risks of newcomer children

Virginia Lane, Hassan Vatanparast

 

Getahun Ersino Lombamo, Nutrition PhD

1st Place – Community Health I

Application of Health Belief Model (HBM) to understand nutrition related health behavior of mothers, with implication to child feeding practices, in pulse or cereal growing rural communities, Ethiopia

Getahun Ersino Lombamo, Carol Henry, Gordon Zello

 

Pedram Rafiei, Pharmacy PhD

1st Place – Structural Chemistry, Biochemistry & Nano Structure

A fractional factorial design for the preparation and optimization of PLGA nanoparticles loaded with an anticancer agent

Pedram Rafiei, Azita Hadadi 

 

Merlin Thangaraj, Pharmacy PhD

1st Place – Genetics and Molecular Biology II

The RNA binding protein QKI regulates Sirt2 mRNA expression during oligodendrocyte development

Merlin Thangaraj, J. Ronald Doucette, Shaoping Ji, Adil Nazarali 

 

Saniya Alwani, Pharmacy MSc

2nd Place – Structural Chemistry, Biochemistry & Nano Structure

Amino acid functionalized nanodiamonds as potential gene delivery vectors

Saniya Alwani, Ildiko Badea

 

Hossein Rafiei, Nutrition PhD

3rd Place – Cell Biology

Polyphenols improve mitochondrial biogenesis and function in oleic acid-induced hepatic steatosis in HepG2 cells

Hossein Rafiei, Brian Bandy

We’d also like to acknowledge the following students who presented posters:

  • Mays Al-Dulaymi (Pharmacy PhD)
  • Reem Alomari (Nutrition MSc)
  • Dania Alrefai (Nutrition MSc)
  • Sarah Fatani (Pharmacy MSc)
  • Mona Hamada (Pharmacy PhD)
  • Muath Helal (Pharmacy PhD)
  • Zeinab Hosseini (Nutrition PhD)
  • Kosar Omidian (Nutrition PhD)
  • Shelby Reid (Pharmacy MSc)
  • Waleed Mohammed Saeid (Pharmacy PhD)
  • Noura Sheikhalzoor (Nutrition MSc)

The participation of 18 of our students allowed graduate research in the College to truly stand out this year—thank you to everyone who took part!