June 2023

Mulatwau Haile, graduate student researcher (Chen Lab), received Honorable Mention for the Dr. Lorna Carlin Excellence in Research Award.

Matthew Sandoval, a current lab assistant (Diaz-Alonso Lab) and incoming A&N PhD student, received the Eugene Cota-Robles fellowship. This is the most prestigious diversity fellowship at UC Irvine. It provides a stipend and tuition for the 1^st and 4^th years of graduate school.

Gerado Sandoval, graduate student researcher (Diaz-Alonso Lab), presented a poster and a talk at the LEARNMEM2023 conference held in Huntington Beach.

Cassie Kooiker, graduate student researcher (Baram Lab), received Honorable Mention for the Dr. Lorna Carlin Excellence in Research Award.

Lara Taniguchi (Baram Lab) was chosen as the 2022-23 Best A&N Progress in Neuroscience (PiN) Speaker amoung pre-doc trainees. Lara also received the 2023 John Haycock Graduate Student Travel Award from the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Yannick Fotio (Piomelli Lab) was chosen as the 2022-23 A&N Best Progress in Neuroscience Speaker among post-doc trainees.

Rachael Hokenson (Baram Lab) received the Renée Harwick Advanced Graduate Student Award from the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory.

Javier Diaz-Alonso’ undergraduate researcher Carmen Ramirez Alonso received the Robert Ernst prize from the School of Biological Science’s Excellence in Research Program.

Daniele Piomelli’s recent paper “Frequent Low-Dose Δ⁹-Tetrahydrocannabinol in Adolescence Disrupts Microglia Homeostasis and Disables Responses to Microbial Infection and Social Stress in Young Adulthood” published in Biological Psychiatry (Lin et at., Dec 2022) was featured in a Psychology Today article by Dr. Timmen Cermak.

Xiangmin Xu has received an NIH grant ($10 million) for a multi-institutional team led by UCI. It will focus on single-cell transcriptomic and epigenomic analysis of brain cell vulnerabilities to tauopathies in early AD impacted brain regions