The ISCRM Fellows program began in 2017, the year the Washington State Legislature first included funding for ISCRM in the state budget. In a critical show of support for stem cell research, the legislature appropriated $2.25 million for core staff and technologies, innovation pilot awards for faculty, and a trainee fellowship program to help the UW fulfill its mission, increase capacity for labs, and provide foundational research experiences for graduate, undergraduate, and postdoctoral students embarking on science careers. In 2019, the annual funding was increased to $2,625,000.
The FY21 ISCRM Fellows were selected from a deep pool of undergraduate students, PhD students, and postdocs making critical contributions to medical research. Please join us in congratulating the following recipients.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Swati Mishra (Young Lab)
Funds from the ISCRM fellowship will allow Swati Mishra to examine the influence of Alzheimer’s disease predisposing mutations on endo-lysosomal function of microglia and to model microglia development in 3D cerebral organoids, hopefully revealing a deeper understanding of contribution of microglia to neurodegenerative pathology.
Graduate Student Fellows
Changho Chun, Bioengineering (Mack Lab)
Changho Chun aims to study the extent of transcriptomic overlap between native human spinal neurons and iPSC-derived neurons at the single cell level. The goal is to produce for the first time a map of the cellular trajectories and transcriptional signatures for the various human ventral horn neuronal subtypes both in vitro and in vivo—a resource that will fuel future studies like the creation of an iPSC-derived neuromuscular junction.
Abby Nagle, Bioengineering (Davis and Regnier Labs)
Abby Nagle will undertake the use of a recently developed FRET molecular biosensor to measure dynamic tension across the focal adhesion protein vinculin in iPSC derived cardiomyocytes. The aim of the experiment is to correlate focal adhesion tension with sarcomere assembly as a response to changes in myocyte contractility. Her overall goal is to elucidate the molecular mechanisms by which cardiomyocytes sense changes in adhesion tension and transduce these mechanical signals to modify cellular structure.
