Congratulations to the recipients of the Biophysics program’s first annual awards, recognizing the achievements of our outstanding graduate and undergraduate students.
We are pleased to offer these awards, made possible by the generous support of our friend and colleague Sam Krimm through the Krimm Endowment established by Sam in support of graduate students in Biophysics.
The Krimm Exceptional Dissertation Award recognizes a graduate student who defended their dissertation in the past academic year. The inaugural Krimm Exceptional Dissertation award is going to Chris Macdonald for his dissertation titled “Complexity in the Membrane: The Fluc Family of Fluoride Channels and Small Multidrug Resistance Family of Transporters as Models for Understanding Membrane Protein Structural and Functional Evolution.” Chris layed new ground as the first student in Randy Stockbridge’s lab while making valuable contributions to the graduate program.
The Krimm Exceptional Graduate Student Award recognizes mid-career graduate students who are actively working on dissertation projects. The inaugural Krimm Exceptional Graduate student award is being shared this year by Elizabeth Tidwell and Ziyuan Chen. Liz’s work in the Kutmos lab combines modeling,bioanalytical characterization, biochemical binding analysis, and structural methods to identify small molecule binding partners of structured RNAs. Ziyuan Chen’s work in the Biteen lab develops experimental and analytical methods to quantify protein mobility in live bacterial cells, extracting information on their functional states.
The Exceptional Undergraduate Student Award recognizes graduating biophysics majors or minors. The inaugural Exceptional Undergraduate award is being shared by Pujan Ajmera and RaghuRam Prasad. Both students have made major contributions to research in their respective labs while being leaders in the Biophysics Club and other program activities.
