Page 2 - IBP In Focus Newsletter

2 IN FOCUS t ISSUE 2021-2022
t GRADUATE PROGRAM UPDATES
IBP Graduate Program Highlights 2021
The IBP Graduate Program is thriving because of everyone’s passion and involvement in the recruitment and training of our graduate students. We have had 2 graduate students defend their thesis in the past year, bringing the total number of gradu- ates from our program to 16. Forum Kamdar defended her the- sis “Modeling Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Cardiomyopathy using Patient Specific Human Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Derived-Cardiomyocytes.” The work presented during her thesis defense was published in 2 first author publications, both in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. Forum is currently an Assistant Professor in the cardiovascular division and has started her own independent research labo- ratory where she is investigating the molecular mechanisms of advanced heart failure in neuromuscular cardiomyopathy. Carolina Ortiz Cordero defended her thesis “Unraveling the Mechanisms Underlining Fukutin-Related Protein Pathogenesis using Patient-Specific Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Myotubes.” Carolina’s work was recently published in the jour- nals Elife and Trends in Cellular Biology. Carolina is transition- ing to a post-doctoral fellowship with the Kiessling lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Congratulations to both!
Other accomplishments of our students include the following: Seokwon Jo and Jae Hwi Sung have successfully passed their oral preliminary exam, and 5 students have scheduled their oral preliminary exam. The now second-year students complet- ed their written preliminary exams. Arthur de la Cruz won the Allan Hemingway award for accomplishing the highest cumula- tive GPA upon completion of the first-year coursework.
Dr. Jop van Berlo,
Director of Graduate Studies
This year we welcomed our incoming
graduate students, Rawan Almutlaq,
Gavin Fredrickson, Jenna Mendelson
and Sara Puccini, during our first IBP
graduate program and departmental
retreat at the Biological Station at
Itasca State Park. Over the course of 2 days we had many events where students and faculty interacted in a low-key set- ting. During the retreat we discussed many facets of the gradu- ate program, such as student mentoring, professional develop- ment, expectations in the first year, while the faculty discussed strategies for developing a training grant proposal and how to enhance collaborative research within the department and beyond IBP. The graduate students worked in groups to craft a testable hypothesis. During the 2-day retreat the groups per- formed experiments on themselves and other volunteers using the minimal equipment that was available in the Biopacs and provided by the Townsend laboratory. At the end of the 2-day retreat the groups presented their findings in a collaborative manner and it was really great to see what they had accom- plished in such little time. It was great to have so many faculty participate in this event, and we hope that we can have full participation of all students next time.
For the next couple of months, the graduate program will focus on student recruitment. We hope to grow the number of appli- cants to our graduate program over the next 3 years to 75-100. To help accomplish this we are starting a recruitment commit- tee for the graduate program. But we need your help as well.