William Theune received the 2024 Lepow Award for Outstanding Biomedical PhD Student entering the 4th year of study at the Graduate Student Research Day.  This award, established in 1986 in honor of Dr. Irwin H. Lepow, a well-known faculty member, researcher and founding father of UConn Health, is given to the outstanding fourth-year student in the Biomedical Science Ph.D. program. William studies under the mentorship of Dr. Kepeng Wang.

Congratulations to Andreia Cadar for receiving the Graduate Student Mentorship Award at the 2024 Graduate Student Research Day.  This award is presented to a student for their outstanding and sustained contributions in mentoring activities that improve graduate student life and further the overall educational mission of the university. Andreia has committed substantial efforts toward outreach and mentorship both at UConn Health and throughout the community to help provide opportunity to younger students and train future scientists. Andreia’s thesis project focuses on the impact of senescence cells on age-related declines in immune responses. More specifically, her research aims to evaluate the ability of senolytic therapies to improve vaccine responses in aged mice. Dr. Jenna Bartley is her mentor.

Congratulations to Vincent Graziano for receiving first place for best oral presentation at the 2024 Graduate Student Research Day.  Vinnie  is a member of Dr. Vijay Rathinam’s laboratory, and his project is titled “RNA N-glycosylation enables innate immune evasion and homeostatic efferocytosis”.

Congratulations to Ziming Cao for receiving the first-place award  for best poster presentation at the 2024 Graduate Student Research Day.  With the guidance of his mentor Dr. Zhichao Fan, Ziming’s project focuses on how Sh3bp2 mutation altered neutrophil development profiling by single-cell RNA sequencing.

Timofey Karginov received the 2024 Henderson Award for Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis in Biomedical Science at the annual Graduate Student Research Day.   This prize was established in memory of Edward G. Henderson, Ph.D., a faculty member in the Department of Pharmacology from 1968 to 1997. Dr. Henderson is remembered for his commitment to graduate education and his dedication to the supervision of graduate students.  Timofey studied under the mentorship of Dr. Anthony Vella.

Congratulations to Kristina Delgado for receiving the third-place poster presentation award at the 2024 Graduate Student Research Day.   Kristina’s project centers around the development of a vaccine against Treponema pallidum (Tp), the causative agent of syphilis.  Under the mentorship of Drs. Justin Radolf, Kelly Hawley, and Melissa Caimano, Kristina’s research focuses on identifying surface-exposed loops of Tp ß-barrel-forming outer membrane proteins (OMPs) to inform vaccine candidate selection.  Her use of long-term in vitro  cultivation of Tp allowed for the development of a GFP⁺ Tp strain, which enables precise tracking of bacterial infections with the immune system, significantly advancing the field’s ability to study spirochete-host dynamics and identify effective vaccinogens.

Congratulations to Vincent Graziano on the award of his NIH F31 fellowship grant through the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases entitled “Innate immune roles of glycoRNA”.  Vinnie is a PhD candidate in the Rathinam laboratory in the Department of Immunology.

Congratulations Dr. Sivapriya Kailasan Vanaja and Ms. Skylar Wright for having their paper, “A bacterial toxin co-opts caspase-3 to disable active gasdermin D and limit macrophage pyroptosis”  published in the journal Cell Reports. The paper, first-authored by Ms. Skylar Wright, a graduate student, identified a novel molecular mechanism by which a clinically significant human pathogen, Enterohemorrhagic E. coli, utilizes its virulence factor, Shiga toxin, to effectively suppress host protective noncanonical inflammasome responses.

Congratulations to Dr. Penghua Wang and his laboratory for having their paper, “UBR5 promotes antiviral immunity by disengaging the transcriptional brake on RIG-I like receptors" published in the journal Nature Communications ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-45141-1). This study screens 375 definite ubiquitin ligases and identifies that UBR5 promotes RIG-I like receptor transcription epigenetically and antiviral immunity.   Dr. Duomeng Yang is the first the author. Immunology Chairman Dr. Anthony Vella and Department of Medicine faculty member Dr. Yanlin Wang also contributed to this work.

Congratulations to Dr. Vijay Rathinam and Dr. Puja Kumari for having their paper, 'Host extracellular vesicles confer cytosolic access to systemic LPS licensing non-canonical inflammasome sensing and pyroptosis’ published in the journal Nature Cell Biology. The paper first-authored by Dr. Puja Kumari, a postdoctoral fellow in the Rathinam lab, identified extracellular vesicles (EVs) secreted by host cells capture circulating bacterial ipopolysaccharide (LPS) and escort it to the cytosol of cells enabling non-canonical inflammasome sensing and cell death. The findings from this study provide insights into cytosolic immune surveillance of systemic microbial products.