April-May 2023

Jennifer Yonan (Steward lab) has been awarded a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship. In a highly competitive process, only individuals identified as alternatives amongst the top-ranked UC President’s Postdoc program are eligible for consideration of Chancellor’s appointments. This fellowship will fund Dr. Yonan for two years as she works on PTEN deletion and epilepsy.

Max Garduño (Xu Lab) has been awarded a prestigious Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship. This award will support Max for 3 years of graduate work, and he is invited to attend the Conference of Ford Fellows.

Tuan-Chen Tsai (Watanabe lab) has received a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the FRAXA Foundation.  The $100,000 award will support Dr. Tsai’s work on “Modeling Fragile X Syndrome using multi-regions human organoids” for two years.

Jason Lee (Igarashi Lab) received ’Honorable Mention’ for this year’s SOM Basic Science Outstanding Graduate Student Research Award.

Mulatwau Haile (Chen Lab) received the President’s Dissertation Year Fellowship from UCI’s Graduate Division. This is a one of UCI’s most prestigious Diversity Fellowships, and will support Mulatawa in her final graduate year, 2023-24.

Gregory de Carvalho (Chen Lab) has received a Faculty Mentor Program Fellowship from UCI Graduate Division. This fellowship is designed to increase the number of students completing their PhD degree and successfully attaining a faculty position. It will support Greg’s graduate work for one year.

Alex Mabou-Tagne (Piomelli Lab) won First Place Award and a monetary prize for his oral presentation at the 7th Annual UCI Postdoctoral Research Symposium. Dr. Mabou-Tagne works on effects of cannabinoids and fatty acid ethanolamides in pain models.

Danielle Piomelli has been awarded $2 million from the Department of Cannabis Control for a translational study on the short- and long-term effects of high-dose THC. Dr. Piomelli also was awarded a Proof of Product grant for the study of a medical food that prevents the emergence of chronic pain after surgery. He was also recently interviewed by USA Today, and met with a Korean delegation regarding developing CBD medications as part of UCI’s Office of Global Engagement.

Bobby Hunt’s recent paper “Brain-wide reconstruction of inhibitory circuits after traumatic brain injury” published in Nature Communications (2022) was selected for the 2023 STAT Madness competition to find the best innovation in science and medicine. Bobby’s report made it to the 3^rd round of 16 finalists.

Autumn Ivy, Joint appointee in Anatomy & Neurobiology, was awarded a CHOC Chief Scientific Officer grant in collaboration with colleagues at CHOC and Xiangmin Xu (Anatomy & Neurobiology). In addition, Dr. Ivy gave a platform talk for “Current Protocols: Molecular Neuroscience”; her work was one of the highlighted protocols published in 2022. Dr. Ivy also gave a UCI Health “What Matters to me and Why” presentation last month.

Munjal Acharya has been selected as the winner of the 2023 School of Medicine Equity and Diversity in Mentoring Award. Dr. Acharya will be presented this award, that also includes a monetary prize, at a ceremony in June.

Xiangmin Xu has been selected as the winner of the 2023 School of Medicine Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Research Award. Dr. Xu’s work focuses on brain circuit organization and function. He will receive this award and a monetary prize this June.

Mark Fisher, Joint appointee in Anatomy & Neurobiology, received the 2023 UCI School of Medicine “Innovation in Mentoring Award. In addition, Dr. Fisher and Dr. Xiangmin Xu (A&N Dept), with colleagues in Medicine, are PIs on an internal $150,000 grant for the “Investing to develop Center-Scale Multidisciplinary Convergence Research Programs” sponsored by UCI Office of Research. They will be studying erythrocyte-dependent mechanisms of cerebral microvascular disease.