JULY 2024: ALANA COLAFRANCESCO was awarded a slot on the Training Program in Neurodegeneration T32 grant (T32NS095775). This award was granted after a competitive application process to identify students with the potential for developing a successful independent research career in neurodegeneration research. This award provides the opportunity for enhanced training and coursework in neurodegeneration and supports a portion of her stipend and travel for 2024-2025.

JULY 2024: CAMERON BENJAMIN (summer student) won the 3-minute Thesis Competition for the UAB Summer EXPO. His project explored the cellular specificity of synuclein aggregation in the pre-formed fibril model of Parkinson Disease.

JULY 2024: SAMIRA MOLAEI RAMSHE was awarded a graduate student fellowship supported by the Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama Foundation. This award was granted after a competitive application process to identify students with the potential for developing a successful independent research career in Alzheimer’s Disease and Alzheimer’s-related Dementia research. This award provides the opportunity for enhanced training and coursework in neurodegeneration and supports a portion of her stipend and travel for 2024-2025.

JUNE 2024: NARCY AMIREDDY was awarded a summer fellowship through the UAB Summer Research academy. This award provided a stipend for Narcy to work in the Cowell lab over the summer, investigating how genes are regulated in spiny projection neurons, with relevance for Huntington Disease.

JUNE 2024: NAVYA GULLAPALLI was awarded a summer research fellowship from the Parkinson’s Foundation (website). This fellowship provided a stipend for her work in the Cowell lab in a novel mouse model of Parkinson Disease risk and included opportunities for shadowing a physician who performs deep-brain stimulation for the treatment of Parkinson Disease patients.

FEB 2024: AANCHAL BEHARA won first place in the Alabama Junior Academy of Science competition for high school science researchers in the Medicine category. The award supported her travel to Albuquerque, New Mexico for a national competition.

JUL 2023: LATHAM GIRONA won second place in the poster presentations and third place in the oral presentations for the UAB Summer EXPO. His project explored the neurobiological role of the transcriptional regulator TFE3 in autophagy and lysosomal regulation through the use of TFE3 knockout and wildtype mouse models.