Graduate Students

Neuroscience Student Awards 2007 - 2008

Undergraduate Students

Nick Santistevan, an undergraduate student in the lab of Dr. Xinyu Zhao, has won a $300 prize in the 2007 Undergraduate Symposium at UNM for his poster presentation, "MeCP2 is an epigenetic regulator critical to neuronal maturation in brain development.” Nick was accepted by the MARC program last fall and was recently awarded a full fellowship to do research at UCSF during the summer of 2007. In addition, he received a scholarship to attend the Eighth Annual Berkeley Edge Conference at UC Berkeley in October 2007.

Chris Marquez, a MARC student in Dr. Nora Perrone-Bizzozero's lab, was awarded a full fellowship to do research at UCSF during the summer of 2007.

David Lee, an undergraduate student in Dr. Linda Saland's lab, won a $300 prize at the 2007 Undergraduate Symposium, for his poster entitled: ” Chronic ethanol consumption and withdrawal modulates opioid receptor-stimulated G-protein coupling in rat brain

Graduate Students

Chessa Scullin A Biomedical Sciences graduate student in the lab of Don Partridge, was selected to attend a Gordon Conference on synaptic transmission in July 2008.

Vibhati Kulkarney, a Biomedical Sciences graduate student in the lab of Nora Perrone-Bizzozero, received a Student Merit Meeting Award to attend the meeting of the Research Society on Alcoholism in July 2007.

Michael Bullock, an MD/PhD student in Nora Perrone-Bizzozero’s lab, has been awarded an ISN/ASN Travel Award Program Grant to assist in his attendance at the International Society for Neurochemistry and American Society for Neurochemistry (ISN/ASN) meeting in 2007 he also was awarded the SfN Chapters travel award to the 2007 SfN meeting.

Jennifer Sanderson, a Biomedical Sciences graduate student in Fernando Valenzuela’s lab, was awarded a National Research Service Award in May, 2007.

Ebany Martinez, a Biomedical Sciences graduate student in the lab of Andrea Allan, has received a grant from the Graduate and Professional Society at UNM. This money is to fund her research project: Arsenic in New Mexico : Identifying the mechanism of Arsenic induced damage. Ms. Martinez has also received a travel award from the Society of Toxicology to attend a conference in 2007. In addition to these awards, Ebany received 3rd place for her oral presentation in the 2008 student Research Day. Ebany Martinez is currently the President of the BioMedical Sciences Graduate Student Program at UNM.

Richard Smrt, a graduate student in the lab of Xinyu Zhao, won second place in the category "Confocal, single plane, three channel image"
in the Microscopy Facility Imaging Competition. Awards were given out on Tuesday, January 30th 2007. The image was then published in the Pathology newsletter along with the other winners.

Kate Harms, a graduate student in Lee Anna Cunningham's lab was the recipient of a 2007-2008 Edmund & Thelma W Evans Charitable Trust Scholarship and she was awarded an American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship in 2008. In addition, she was awarded the SfN Chapters travel award to the 2008 SfN meeting.

Basam Barkho, a graduate student in Xinyu Zhao's lab received an American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship in 2008.

Sabrina Samudio-Ruiz in Kevin Caldwell’s lab, was awarded a predoctoral NRSA fellowship from NIAAA for 2007 - 2009 .

Postdocs

Xuekun Li a postdoc in Xinyu Zhao's lab received an award from the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR) for attending its annual meeting in June, 2008 in Philadelphia