The School of Molecular & Cellular Biology is pleased to announce the award winners from the 2024 Graduate Research Retreat, held at the I Hotel and Illinois Conference Center on Friday, March 29. Awards were presented for both the poster sessions and oral presentations. 

Poster Session: 
Owen Ouyang, in Dr. Nicholas Wu’s lab, with “oPool+ Display: A Rapid and Cost-effective In-vitro Antibody Screening Platform.”

Joel Rivera-Cardona, in Dr. Christopher Brooke’s lab, with “Using Single-cell Approaches to Characterize the Evolution of Influenza’s Innate Immune Antagonism.”

Yenny Yook, in Dr. Nien-Pei Tsai’s lab, with “Hyperfunction of Post-synaptic Density Protein 95 Promotes Seizure Response in Early-Stage Aβ Pathology.”

Oral Session:

Megan Ringling, in Dr. Steven Blanke’s lab, with “Helicobacter pylori vacA’s Binding Region and Its Potential as a Clinical Gastric Disease Risk Marker.”

Mireille Farjo, in Dr. Christopher Brooke’s lab, with “Genetic and Spatial Properties of Superinfection Exclusion by Influenza Viruses.”

Xiangning Song, in Dr. Milan Bagchi’s lab, with “Trophoblast Cells Secrete Extracellular Vesicles to Communicate with Maternal Cells During Placenta Development.”

The School of MCB would like to thank all of the judges for volunteering their time to the event. 

A special thank you is extended to our keynote speaker, Dr. Paul Selvin, Professor of Biological Physics, for his talk entitled, “Does (Bio)Physics have anything to say about Alzheimer’s Disease?”