College of Science Students Win at Biomedical Sciences Symposium Poster Session
More than 30 research posters competed for prizes at the 2024 Biomedical Sciences Symposium, which took place on Sept. 9 at the Dubois Center at UNC Charlotte Center City. Hosted by the Division of Research and the North Carolina Biotechnology Center, participants included students from UNC Charlotte, the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) and NC State University.
Three winning posters are from the College of Science, taking a prize in each category. UNC Charlotte students from the College of Science, College of Engineering and College of Computing and Informatics (CCI) accounted for half of the awards presented.
“We have excellent training and mentoring of students on our campus and we have fantastic lab facilities. Our undergraduate and graduate students are given hands-on training with state-of-the-art equipment and have opportunities to present their work at conferences and to publish their work,” said College of Science Dean Bernadette Donovan-Merkert. “We continue to build top-tier research enterprises on our campus to support the Charlotte region by training the technical workforce of scientists and engineers of tomorrow.”
College of Science Winners:
Best Poster Award from the Journal Biomolecules:
- Trevor Price*, Sarah Lotz, Katie Reagin, Rae Lee, Kristen Funk: “Investigating the intersection of viral infection, neuroinflammation, and tauopathies,” from the biological sciences Funk Lab.
The prize is the US dollar equivalent of 200 Swiss Franc per team.
Best Poster Awards from the Biomedical Sciences Symposium
- Infectious Disease topic category winner:
- Kaitlin Klotz, biological sciences Ph.D. student in the Chakrabarti Lab: “Regulation Telomerase Activity in Trypanosoma brucei Through RNA Structural Dynamics and Enzyme Post-Translational Modification”
- Nanomaterials topic category winner:
- Erin Mills, biological sciences Ph.D. student in the Johnson Lab: “Immunomodulatory nucleic acid nanoparticles (NANPs) stimulate protective bone cell responses following S. aureus challenge”
The prize is $200 per team.
Review the full list of poster award winners on the Biomedical Sciences Symposium website.
Sponsors of the event included: North Carolina Biotechnology Center, Atrium Health, BioCytics, the Carolina BioOncology Institute, and Illumina.