MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences held its annual Graduate Student Research Day at the Cooley Life Center on Thursday, June 13. More than 233 alumni, students, and faculty attended the event. Students were given the opportunity to present their research during a full day of competition, featuring oral and poster presentations as well as elevator pitches.

The keynote speech, “Using Multi-omics to Understand Human Skin Evolution Out-of-Africa and Skin Health Disparities”, was presented by Cristina deGuzman Strong, PhD, associate scientist in the Department of Dermatology at the Henry Ford Cancer Institute Center for Cutaneous Biology and Immunology and associate professor in the Department of Medicine at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.

The event concluded with an awards ceremony.

See photos from GSRD here.

The Graduate School is proud to present the winners from the 2024 GSRD competitions:

Oral Presentation Skills – Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1^st year

1^st: Mariana Najjar (Advisor: Hui-Wen Lo, PhD)

2^nd: Xing-Han Zhang (Advisor: Georgios Karras, PhD)

1^st year student award: Marina Najjar (Advisor: Hui-Wen Lo, PhD)

Oral Presentation Skills – Post-Candidacy PhD

1^st: Takese McKenzie (Advisor: Jian Hu, PhD)

2^nd: Emily Caggiano (Advisor: Emil Schueler, PhD)

Poster Competitions

Top 4 Poster Competition – Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1^st year:

Vicky Chuong (Advisor: Fabricio Do Monte, DVM, PhD)

Peyton High (Advisor: Kendra Carmon, PhD)

Sophia Huang (Advisor: Vihang Narkar, PhD)

Julia Zickus (Advisor: Pratip Bhattacharya, PhD)

1^st year student award: Sophia Huang (Advisor: Vihang Narkar, PhD)

Top 4 Poster Competition – Post-Candidacy PhD

Bridgette Palacios (Advisor: Jian Hu, PhD)

Guillaume Trusz (Advisor: Michael Curran, PhD)

Llaran Turner (Advisor: George Eisenhoffer, PhD)

Amanda Warner (Advisor: Don Gibbons, PhD)

Elevator Speech Contest – Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1^st year

1^st: Madison Shyer (Advisor: Valentin Dragoi, PhD)

2^nd: Zeph Kaffey (Advisor: C. David Fuller, PhD)

People’s Choice Award: Spring Hwang (Advisor: Jian Hu, PhD)

Elevator Speech Contest – Post-Candidacy PhD

1^st: Richa Nayak (Advisor: Yejing Ge, PhD)

2^nd: Yuejiang Lu (Advisor: Humam Kadana, PhD)

People's Choice Award: Barbara Marquez (Advisor: Laurence Court, PhD)

GSRD Scavenger Hunt Winners:

Michael Vouffo

Beatriz Rios

Esther Lujan

Andrea Ramirez

Kayla Yao

Hannah Wani

2023 Dissertation Awardees:

Alfred G. Knudson, Jr., Outstanding Dissertation Award: Vidhi Chandra, PhD (Advisor: Florencia McAllister, PhD)

Michael R. Blackburn Outstanding Dissertation Award: Melissa Franch (Advisor: Valentin Dragoi, PhD)