On Thursday, April 20, the UIC Alumni Association presented its annual Alumni Awards Ceremony honoring standout rising stars, humanitarians, distinguished service and exceptional achievement within UIC’s alumni community. Among the awards, the Alumni Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed by UIC.

Rodney Rothstein is an internationally recognized geneticist who studies yeast as a means to understand human diseases ranging from cancer to COVID-19. He graduated from UIC in 1969 with a major in biological sciences and obtained a PhD from the University of Chicago. He has been studying the molecular mechanisms by which naturally occurring breaks in DNA strands are mended using techniques that are fundamental to understanding how gene mutations cause disease. In 2009, Rothstein was awarded the Genetics Society of America’s Novitski Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is currently a professor of genetics and development at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he has mentored the next generation of geneticists since 1984. Rothstein credits the faculty at UIC with providing the inspiration and confidence to pursue a career in genetics.

Chaolin Zhang will receive a prestigious Maximizing Investigators' Research Award (MIRA) (R35) of $4,313,684 over five years from NIH/NIGMS for “Complexity and evolution of splicing-regulatory networks”. This grant will support studies in the Zhang lab at the intersection of alternative RNA splicing and evolution.

Chaolin Zhang will receive a R56 award for $568,846 from NIH/NHGRI for “Mapping proximal and distal splicing-regulatory elements”. The aims of the project are to develop a high-throughput platform technology for screening of splicing-regulatory elements, to facilitate annotation of noncoding regions in the human genome and drug discovery.

Corrine Abate-Shen, PhD, Molecular Pharmacology and Therapeutics: $486,000 from the Department of the Army, Army Medical Research and Material Command for “Role of ATAD2 in prostate cancer bone metastasis.” 

Four research teams at Columbia University have been awarded the inaugural Edward P. Evans Center for Myelodysplastic Syndromes (MDS) Pilot Awards and Fellowships.

The center, established by the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) in December 2021, is dedicated to the study and treatment of MDS, a malignant disease that attacks bone marrow stem cells. Each year, more than 40,000 individuals are diagnosed with MDS, and roughly one-third will develop acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a severe and rapidly progressing form of blood cancer.

To support their research, each team will receive a one-year $100,000 grant for the Edward P. Evans Center Pilot Awards and a two-year $60,000/year grant for the fellowships. The two pilot projects are being led by principal investigators Pawel Muranski, MD, assistant professor of medicine and of pathology and cell biology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons (VP&S); Amer Assal, MD, assistant professor of medicine at VP&S; and Raul Rabadan, PhD, professor of systems biology and of biomedical informatics at VP&S. The two fellowships have been awarded to Rossella Labella, PhD, postdoctoral research scientist in the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics(link is external and opens in a new window), and Junsong Zhou, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Rehabilitation and Regenerative Medicine. 

Read full article on HICCC Newsroom.

Adolfo Ferrando, MD, PhD, and Raul Rabadan, PhD, Institute for Cancer Genetics: $2,500,000 over five years from the National Institute on Aging for “The role of PHF6 in the control of hematopoietic stem cell aging.” 

Rodney Joel Rothstein, PhD, Genetics & Development: $3,924,540 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Molecular mechanisms underlying recombination at DNA double-strand breaks and stalled replication forks.” 

Michael Shen, PhD, Genetics & Development, will receive $1,950,515 over five years from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences for “Genetic Approaches to Development and Disease.”

Michael Shen, PhD, the Arthur J. Antenucci Professor of Medical Sciences and  professor of genetics, urology, and systems biology at Columbia’s Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, has been named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)(link is external and opens in a new window). Dr. Shen, who also co-leads the Tumor Biology and Microenvironment research program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC), joins four other Columbia faculty members who have been elected to the 2021 class of AAAS fellows.

Read full article on Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center News Page