Immunology

Our own Maria Xu, Ashley Russo and Cory Brennick received awards for their participation in the 2017 Graduate Student Research Day. Well done to all participants! Maria Xu – First prize for her poster presentation Ashley Russo – Third prize for her poster presentation and recipient of the Lepow award. Cory Brennick – First prize for best oral presentation.
Congratulations to Maria Xu, an M.D./Ph.D. student in Dr. Anthony Vella’s Laboratory, who has received an American Heart Association (AHA) Clinical Health Profession Student Training Grant Award for her exciting project centering on the interface of immunology with vascular biology. This AHA Pre-doctoral Fellowship Program aims to enhance the integration of research with clinical training for students who intend careers as physician-scientists by providing two years of stipend and project support. Her team-based scientific proposal will probe the role of T cells and cytokines in early atherosclerosis and will be performed in collaboration with Drs. Patrick Murphy, Beiyan Zhou, and Anabelle Rodriguez of the Center for Vascular Biology and Immunology departments.
The Office of Faculty Affairs takes the opportunity throughout the year to celebrate UConn Health faculty. Each faculty member they spotlight has been selected from recent nominations received from our department chairs, center directors, and educational leadership. Our own Dr. Vijay Rathinam was selected for this recognition. Watch Faculty Spotlight Video.
Ashley Russo received the 2017 Lepow Award at the Graduate Student Research Day held on June 26,2017. This award, established in 1986 in honor of Dr. Irwin H. Lepow, a well-known faculty member, research and founding father of UConn Health, is given to the outstanding fourth-year student in the Biomedical Science Ph.D. program. Ashley is a graduate student in the Department of Immunology under the mentorship of Dr. Vijay Rathinam (pictured with Ashley).
We offer congratulations and best wishes to Jeremy Grenier and Julia Svedova on their recent Ph.D. dissertation defenses.
Erica Lorenzo, pictured here with her mentor Dr. Laura Haynes, received a Glenn/AFAR Scholarship for Research in the Biology of Aging. This competitive program is designed to give students enrolled in M.D., D.O., Ph.D., or combined-degree programs the opportunity to conduct a three-to-six-month research project focused on biomedical research in aging with the goal of learning more about the field of aging research, as well as increasing their understanding of the challenges involved in improving the quality of life for older people.
Congratulations to Dr. Sivapriya Kailasan Vanaja on receiving a UConn Research Excellence Program award for her proposal entitled, “Modulation of Noncanonical Inflammasome by Bacterial Pathogen”. The focus of this project is to understand the mechanisms by which bacterial pathogens modulate the host innate immune responses to successfully establish an infection.

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