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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.

UIC=University of Illinois Chicago
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Rodney Rothstein
BS ‘69, Biological Sciences
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
 

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.

 

 

Andrea Califano will receive  $6,909,000 over seven years from the National Cancer Institute for “Predicting Cancer Cell Response to Endogenous and Exogenous Perturbations at the Single Cell Level”. The aims of the project are to create the first generation of genome-and proteome-wide network models that can effectively predict the probabilistic, dynamic response of mammalian cells to small molecule and genetic perturbations, as well as their ability to plastically reprogram  across the relatively small number of molecularly distinct states detected in a specific human malignancy. 

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.

 

Andrea Califano will receive  $4,893,902 over five years from the National Cancer Institute for “Elucidating and Targeting tumor dependencies and drug resistance determinants at the single cell level”. The aims of the project are to elucidate Master Regulators representing non-oncogene dependencies of molecularly distinct malignant subpopulations coexisting in the same tumor to support novel combination and sequential therapy approaches.

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.

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

 

A discussion with Andrea Califano(link is external and opens in a new window) and narrative medicine writer Rita Charon, "Aflight in ideas and visions, he and his colleagues in systems biology have been soaring toward what Califano predicts as the Golden Age of Biology. Not unlike the golden ages of physics and chemistry, when Newton and Lavoisier broke through conceptual barriers to see with new minds, this age equips biology for flight"

Read full article on Narratives of Discovery page.

December 14, 2021

New award for Chaolin Zhang

Chaolin Zhang, PhD, Associate Professor in Systems Biology will receive $2,766,392 over five years from the National Insititue of Neurological Disorders and Stroke for “RNA regulatory networks in neuronal cell type diversity and function”. This award will support Dr. Zhang to understand better post-transcriptional gene expression regulation through specific protein -RNA interactions, or RNA-regulatory networks which is critical for expanding the complexity of the mammalian nervous system with implications in an expanding list of neuronal disorders. The proposed studies will investigate alternative splicing regulation in generating the distinct molecular programs in diverse neuronal cell types of mouse cortex. Information obtained in this project will provide insights into the fundamental mechanisms that controls such diversity as well as the functional consequences in defined, clinically relevant neuronal cell types.

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