Several UW–Madison undergraduate students with Wisconsin National Primate Research Center faculty mentors received Hilldale Undergraduate Research Awards and one received a Sophomore Research Fellowship in a live virtual ceremony presided over by Chancellor Rebecca Blank on April 28, 2021.
Grants from the Hilldale Foundation and the Wisconsin State Legislature provide for awards of $3,000 each to undergraduate students and $1,000 to their faulty/staff advisors to work in collaboration on research projects. Two Hilldale Fellowships are also provided by the McPherson Eye Research Institute and One Hilldale Fellowship is provided by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Arboretum.
Sophomore Research Fellowships are funded by generous grants from the Brittingham Fund and the Kemper K. Knapp Bequest. These awards provide $2,500 each to undergraduate students and $500 to their faculty/staff advisors to work in collaboration on research projects.
A list of Hilldale and other campus award winners will be posted on UW sites soon. In the meantime, here are some of our student winners listedby name, major, mentor and project title:
Undergraduate Student Awards
Lukas Henjum, neurobiology, David Abbott, Ph.D., “Estrogen-Receptor Alpha Neurons in the Arcuate Nucleus Mediate Female Neural Inhibition of Neuroendocrine Puberty” (Hilldale).
Samuel Neuman, biomedical engineering, Marina Emborg, M.D., Ph.D., “Genomic Editing by CRISPR/Cas9 Nanocapsules as a Therapeutic Neural-Network Strategy for Parkinson’s Disease” (Hilldale).
Anusha Ray Dey, neurobiology, Graham L. Banes, Ph.D., “Searching for Chemical Signals in Orang-utan Urine using Liquid Chromatography-Tandem Mass Spectrometry” (Hilldale). Anusha is also a winner of a Wisconsin Idea Fellowship.
Sierra Block, biology, Ted Golos, Ph.D., “Identification of SARS-CoV-2 Receptor in the Testis of the Rhesus Macaques and its implications on Reproductive Health and Fertility.” (Sophomore Research Fellowship)
In addition to the UW awards, we’d like to recognize a student who just received an undergraduate summer fellowship from the Parkinson’s Foundation: Anthony Mancinelli, neurobiology, Marina Emborg, M.D., Ph.D., “A listeriosis model to study the relationship between inflammation and α- synuclein expression in the macaque Enteric Nervous System.”
Marina Emborg, Ari Rosenberg, David Abbott receive faculty awards
Marina Emborg, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medical physics, senior scientist at the WNPRC and director of the Preclinical Parkinson’s Research Program, has received the Kellett Mid-Career Award from UW–Madison. The award was created to provide needed support and encouragement to faculty at a critical stage of their careers.
Ari Rosenberg, Ph.D., neuroscience, in support of Ph.D. candidate Lowell W. Thompson, received one of two David G. Walsh Graduate Student Support Initiative awards through the McPherson Eye Research Institute. Another of Rosenberg’s students, Lillian Li, has received a Sophomore Honors Summer Apprenticeship, “Biologically inspired hierarchical neural network for 3D visual processing,” for computational work using the lab’s neuronal recordings and behavioral data from macaque monkeys to guide the development of binocular deep neural networks for 3D computer vision. Rosenberg was also a WiNPRC 2020-2022 Pilot Research Award winner.
David Abbott, Ph.D., UW Ob-Gyn Division of Reproductive Sciences, is one of just five educators on campus to receive the UW-Madison Award for Mentoring Undergraduates in Research, Scholarly and Creative Activities from the UW-Madison Office of the Provost.
Abbott also weighed in on the awards presentation itself: “The online ceremony was very well done, highly professional and personable,” he said. “Each student’s photo appeared as they were named alongside their project title and mentor’s name. The ceremony drew a record-breaking number of attendees since, for the first time, family and friends from around the country and abroad could attend.”
Student award winners, from the left: Top row – Anusha Ray Dey, Samuel Neuman, Sierra Block. Second row – Lukas Henjum, Anthony Mancinelli, Lillian Li. Bottom row – Lowell Thompson.
