February 2023

Yannick Fotio, PharmD PhD, a postdoctoral researcher (Piomelli Lab), was featured in UCI School of Medicine’s “Celebrating Black History Month”. Dr. Fotio received a presidential fellowship to attend college in his native country of Cameroon, and pursued graduate studies in Italy. Recently, he was recognized by the director of NIH for his work at UCI on mechanisms controlling the transition of acute to chronic pain.

Max Garduño (graduate student- Xu Lab) received the Miguel Velez Scholarship for Spring 2022-23. This scholarship ($8,000 stipend and fees) provides financial support to graduate students who demonstrate outstanding past academic achievement as well as future promise, have financial need, and are citizens of a Latin American country.

Cassie Kooiker (MD/PhD student-Baram Lab) had a first-author paper, entitled “Genetic tagging uncovers a robust, selective activation of the thalamic paraventricular nucleus by adverse experiences early in life”, recently accepted to Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science.

Kei Igarashi, PhD is a recipient of the 19^th Japan Academy Medal, the highest honor of The Japan Academy that annually gives formal recognition to outstanding young researchers under the age of 45.

Lulu Chen, PhD was nominated for the 2022 UCI Emerging Innovation/Early Career Innovator of the Year Award from UCI Beall Applied Innovation. This award recognizes individuals who display excellence in the early stages of their career or in the very beginning stages of a breakthrough that is viewed as a novel approach in its field.

David Reinkensmeyer, PhD is lead editor of the book Neurorehabilitation Technology, 3rd edition, which was published recently by Springer. Amazon Link.

Momoko Watanabe, PhD has a paper entitled “TGFβ superfamily signaling regulates the state of human stem cell pluripotency and capacity to create well-structured telencephalic organoids” that ranked No. 8 among the most downloaded papers in Stem Cell Reports.  Dr. Watanabe also was the focus of an online article from the UCI Samueli School of Engineering as part of a “New Faculty Cohort Uses Stem Cells in Tissue Engineering to Advance Regenerative Medicine”. This cohort also includes three Engineering faculty who were hired as part of UCI’s Faculty Hiring for Leveraged Research Excellence (FHLRE) program.