A look back at Intramural NICHD fellow (with mentor) accomplishments during 2021
The Fellows’ Annual Meeting
The NICHD Office of Education hosted a fully VIRTUAL 16th Annual Meeting for Postdoctoral, Clinical, and Visiting Fellows and Graduate Students on Tuesday, May 25, 2021. The day included a keynote lecture on sickle cell disease by Dr. John F. Tisdale, a mentorship perspective by Dr. Gisela Storz, ten career-focused Q&A breakout sessions, and six outstanding scientific talks by NICHD fellows. Throughout the day, fellows had the opportunity to network and share their research during morning and afternoon live, virtual poster sessions. Check out the full recap of the event!
NIH-Wide Recognition
Susanna Mitro, PhD (Grantz lab) placed 2nd overall in the NIH-wide TmT Competition on June 25, 2021, with her talk “Healthy pregnancies: Do uterine fibroids change over gestation?”
Congratulations to the 15 NICHD fellows who received a 2022 Fellows Award for Research Excellence (FARE), an NIH-wide competition that recognizes the important research of intramural fellows. See a complete list of NICHD winners here: NICHD FARE 2022 Recipients
Shreeta Chakraborty, PhD (Rocha lab) and Abhinav Sur, PhD (Farrell lab) were the Scientific Interest Group Awardees for the Developmental Biology Scientific Interest Group and Single-Cell Genomics Interest Group, respectively.
Congratulations to the 11 NICHD postbacs who received an Outstanding Poster Award for scoring within the top 20% of all posters at the 2021 Virtual Postbac Poster Day, held April 27–29, 2021. See a complete list of NICHD winners here: 2021 Virtual Postbac Poster Day Winners
Josette Wlaschin (Le Pichon lab) received a Graduate Student Research Award in the Behavioral Sciences/Psychology/Neuroscience category at the 17th Annual NIH Graduate Student Research Symposium, held February 17–18, 2021.
Velencia Witherspoon, PhD (Basser lab) received a K99 MOSAIC Award (Maximizing Opportunities for Scientific and Academic Independent Careers) for her work on the quantitative characterization of the extracellular matrix components of connective tissue.
NICHD Award Programs
Congratulations to the 22 NICHD fellows who received an Early Career Award. See a complete list of NICHD recipients here: 2021 NICHD Director's Early Career Awards
Postbaccalaureate fellows Andrea Munoz (Porter lab) and Tiara Tillis (Storz lab) joined NICHD as Developing Talent Scholars awardees.
The Fellows Recruitment Incentive Award went to Todd Macfarlan, PhD, for his recruitment of postdoctoral fellow Mohamed Mahgoub Mohamed, MBBS, PhD .
Susanna Mitro, PhD (Grantz lab) and Jennifer Panlilio, PhD (Burgess lab) were selected as the two finalists for the 2021 NICHD TmT competition. See here for a complete list of the seven semi-finalists.
Congratulations to the 2021 Intramural Research Fellowship awardees:
- Alan Kessler, PhD (Maraia lab)
- Gergo Gulyas, PhD (Balla lab)
- Thien Nguyen, PhD (Gandjbakhche lab)
- Anna Dorothea Senft, PhD (Macfarlan lab)
Program Specific Awards
The Center on Compulsive Behaviors Fellowship Awardees include the following NICHD fellows:
- Thien Nguyen, PhD (Gandjbakhche lab)
- Adam Caccavano, PhD (McBain lab)
- Geoffrey Vargish, PhD (McBain lab)
- Wen-Chieh Hsieh, PhD (Serpe lab)
Aisha Burton, PhD (Storz lab) and Rachel Crosby, PhD (Macfarlan lab) both received NIGMS Postdoctoral Research Associate Training (PRAT) Awards.
A big THANK YOU to our 2021 newsletter contributors:
Colin Echeverría Aitken, Mor Alkaslasi, Harry Burgess, Aisha Burton, Ajay Chitnis, Nickolas Chu, Jacob Clarin, Stephanie Cologna, Paul Elizalde, Frances Fernando, Chelsi Flippo, Morgan Ford, Triesta Fowler, Jessica Gleason, Theemeshni Govender, Michael Hilzendeger, Nicholas Johnson, Celine Kisimba, Ayanfeoluwa Kolawole, Esther Kwarteng, Henry Levin, Mengying Li, Anne Martini, Patrick McCarter, Leah Meuter, Alexa Moore, Kristen Polinski, Ashley Pratt, Brian Rafferty, Megha Rajendran, Jason Riley, Katelyn Robertson, Joe Sanchez, Fady Hannah Shmouni, Hayli Spence, Shana Spindler, Constantine Stratakis, Ashim Subedee, Nichole Swan, Canace Tingen, Jolien Tyler, Anna Vlachos, Lauren Walling, Erin Walsh, Jeremy Weaver, Jack Yanovski.
Please submit your accomplishments for publication in the newsletter throughout the year to shana.spindler@nih.gov.