HIRN2022 - HIRN

The following trainees are recipients of the HIRN 2022 Scholarship based on competitive review of abstracts by members of the HIRN Planning Committee.

		Gregory Golden, PhD Institution: University of Pennsylvania Title: Postdoctoral Researcher Affiliation: CMAI (Betts Lab) Gregory Golden is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the laboratory of Professor Michael Betts at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He completed his PhD in Biomedical Sciences from the University of California, San Diego. Dr. Golden currently studies the immune landscape of the pancreas and associated secondary lymphoid organs and the dynamics of the immune system during Type 1 Diabetes development. He has a particular interest in the role of T cells in the autoimmune elimination of beta cells.

		Abhishek Kulkarni, PhD Institution: University of Florida Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow Affiliation: CBDS (Mirmira), CHIB (Brusko) Abhishek Kulkarni is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of Professor Todd Brusko at the University of Florida. He completed his PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Indiana University School of Medicine. He joined Raghu Mirmira as a postdoc at the University of Chicago, where he studied the role of the polyamines-hypusine pathway in human pancreatic islet inflammation. His current work is focused on studying the role of the co-stimulatory protein CD226 in the antigen-presenting cell (APC) – T cell interaction in the context of T1D pathogenesis.

		Olha Melnyk, PhD Institution: Indiana University School of Medicine Title: Postdoctoral Research Fellow Affiliation: CBDS (Linnemann) Olha Melnyk is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the laboratory of Associate Professor Amelia Linnemann at the Indiana University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Applied Sciences-Physics from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Dr. Melnyk is studying pancreatic beta cell physiology, with a focus on autophagic flux and the autophagy machinery, through the use of intravital microscopy. During her PhD studies, she became interested in nonlinear optics and advanced microscopy techniques for live cell imaging.

		Ali Shilleh Institution: University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus Title: Graduate Student Affiliation: CBDS (Russ) Ali Shilleh is a 5^th year PhD Candidate in the Cell Biology, Stem Cells and Development program at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in the laboratory of Holger Russ. He is Serbian-born, Palestinian-raised and completed his BS from the University of Massachusetts, Boston and his MS in Nutrition and Biomedicine from the Technical University of Munich (Germany). Ali’s research focuses on determining the fate of human beta cells upon transplantation.

Congratulations to the HIRN Catalyst Award Recipients Awards

Congratulations to the four recipients of our internally funded “Catalyst” initiative. The goal of this initiative was to support investigators developing bold, innovative, and challenging projects that will catalyze the field and provide important advances in topics of interest to the network. To be considered “catalyzing”, the proposed research must address significant and currently intractable problems by employing approaches or ideas that are currently outside the mainstream of contemporary research. The program is not intended to expand a current research program’s funding in the area of the proposed project, but instead must reflect a fundamental new insight or understanding that will revolutionize the field.

Wen-Hong Li, PhD
University of Texas Southwestern
Medical Center
“Ultra-sensitive Probes for High Resolution Imaging of
Hormone Secretion in Islet Cells of Physiological Preparations” (HPAC)

Jeffrey Millman, PhD
Washington University
School of Medicine in St. Louis
“Epigenomic Engineering of
Stem Cell-Derived Pancreatic Cells” (CHIB)