After two years of virtual events, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences held its annual Graduate Student Research Day in person at the Cooley Life Center on June 23. More than 250 alumni, students, and faculty participated in the event, which featured a full day of competitions for Graduate School students, including oral and poster presentations and elevator speeches.

GSBS alumni Samantha Debes ‘22, PhD, Jackie Peltier-Horn ‘81, PhD, Brian Anderson, PhD ‘21, Erin Lopez ‘18, PhD, Emily Thompson, PhD ‘22, and Natalie Sirisaengtaksin, PhD ‘17, were judges for the competitions.

GSBS alumnus John J. Kopchick, PhD ‘80, and his wife Charlene, attended the event to see presentations by their Kopchick Fellows. GSBS supporters Sue and Logan Brown were also in attendance.

“GSRD is a wonderful annual tradition that brings together our community to highlight the high caliber research performed by GSBS students,” said GSBS Director of Student Affairs and Career Development Raquel Ybañez Salinas, PhD. “This year, over 60 students presented on their research and participated in friendly competition. It was so joyful to be back together in-person and see so many students throughout the entirety of the day deeply engaged in conversations where they were explaining their research and building stronger connections with their GSBS community.”

See photos from the event at go.uth.edu/GSBS-GSRD2022photos

The winners of the GSRD competitions pose with former GSBS Dean Michael R. Blackburn, PhD, far left.

Here are the winners from the 2022 GSRD contests:

Oral Presentation Skills

Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1st Year
1st: Hunter Mehrens (Advisor: Stephen Kry, PhD)
2nd: Shannon Erhardt (Advisor: Jun Wang, PhD)
1st Year Bonus: Andrew Gillard (Advisor: Candelaria Gomez-Manzano, PhD)

Post-Candidacy PhD
1st: Janani Subramaniam (Advisor: Shane Cunha, PhD)
2nd: Xu Zhang (Advisor: Fabricio Do Monte, DVM, PhD)

Poster Competitions

Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1st Year
1st: Stephen Farmer (Advisor: Sheng Zhang, PhD)
2nd: Joshua Morse (Advisor: Zhiqiang An, PhD)
1st Year Bonus: Stephen Farmer (Advisor: Sheng Zhang, PhD)

Post-Candidacy PhD
1st: Raisa Reyes Castro (Advisor: Swathi Arur, PhD)
2nd (tie): Emily Caggiano (Advisor: Cullen Taniguchi, MD, PhD) & Sonia Patel (Advisor: John Heymach, MD, PhD)

Elevator Speech Contests

Pre-Candidacy PhD, MS & SMS, 1st Year
1st: Barbara Marquez (Advisor: Laurence Court, PhD)
2nd: Marvin Wirianto (Advisor: Seung-Hee (Sally) Yoo, PhD)
People's Choice Award: Xin Ru (Cheryl) Jiang (Advisor: Katy Rezvani, MBBS, PhD)

Post-Candidacy PhD
1st & People's Choice Award: Tanvi Visal (Advisor: Sendurai Mani, PhD)
2nd: Joan Jacob (Advisor: Kendra Carmon, PhD)