Student Accomplishments

The Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine provides a training environment and ample opportunities to be prolific in the sciences and active in the community.  Here are just a few of our students' recent accomplishments.

Leadership Roles

• Erin Cohn, M3, Served as a Scientific Officer for Rise Up: Northeast Ohio
• Rupleen Kaur, Systems Biology and Bioinformatics, Served as a Scientific Officer for Rise Up: Northeast Ohio

Recent Publications

• MSTP students Hans Leier, Alexander Foden, and M4 Darren Jindal co-authored the following article: Leier HC#, Foden AJ#, Jindal DA, Wilkov AJ, Van der Linden Costello P, Vanderzalm PJ, Coutinho-Budd J, Tabuchi M, Broihier HT. Glia Control experience-dependent plasticity in an olfactory critical period. Elife. 2025 Jan 30;13. doi: 10.77554/eLife. 100989. PubMed PMID: 39883485; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11781797. (#contributed equally)
• Christina MacAskill published the following paper in Kidney International Reports: MacAskill CJ, Kretzler ME, Parsons A, Gange V, Hach J, Larson S, Zhu Y, Perino J, Farr S, Markley M, Pritts N, Perera-Gonzalez M, Clark HA, Kuehn B, Liu KC, Yu X, Ma D, Chen Y, Flask CA, Dell KM. Multimodal magnetic resonance imaging assessments of kidney disease severity in autosomal recessive polysystic kidney disease. Kidney Int Rep. 2024 Dec;9(12):3592-3595. doi: 10.1016/j.ekir.2024.09.006. eCollection 2024 Dec. PubMed PMID: 39698366; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC11652188.
• MSTP students Claire Fritz, Daniel Feinberg, and Kayla Klatt published the following article: Fritz C, Feinberg D, Radhakrishnan A, Klatt K, Chan ER, Rock P, Burack R, Parameswaran R. B cell activating factor induces drug resistance in hairy cell leukemia variant. Biomedicines. 2025 Apr 7;13(4). doi: 10.3390/biomedicines13040890. PubMed PMID: 40299479; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC12025152.

Conferences and Presentations

• Melissa Bonner received the AAI Young Investigator Award for her work at the 2025 TRCCC Annual Meeting.
• Himanshu Dashora was invited to present his work at the 2025 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Innovators Symposium.
• Brian Kim won Best Poster at the 2025 Keystone Conference.
• Alice Liu won first place in Oral Presentations at the 2025 APAMSA National Conference.
• Paulameena Shultes received the Travel Award / Landahl Travel Grant Recipient Award for the 2025 Society of Mathematical Biology (SMB) Annual Meeting.

Research Grants and Scholarships

Twenty of our current students have been awarded F30 or F31 grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).  Many more have received scholarships or fellowships from other organizations. Below is a list of those newly awarded 2024 and 2025.

• Corynn Appolonia was awarded an F30
• Bijoya Basu received the Futures in Neurologic Research Scholarship from the American Academy of Neurology (AAN)
• Sofia Corella was awarded an F31
• Diana Chin received the Keystone Symposia Future of Science Fund Scholarship and was awarded an F30
• Himanshu Dashora was awarded an F30
• Emily Klemm was awarded an F30
• Stephen Wang was awarded an F30

Medical School Graduation Awards 2025

MSTP students were well represented this year at the CWRU School of Medicine Graduation Awards Ceremony:

• All of our 2025 MD Graduates received Honors with Distinction in Research
• Michelle Cruz:  The Donald E. Minch, MD, Memorial Award
• Derek Wong:
  The Max Miller Award
  The Martin Wahl Memorial Fund Award
• Preethy Sridharan
  The Martin Wahl Memorial Fund Award
• Michaela Cooley and Emma Kundracik: 
  The Leslie T. Wester, Jr. Graduation Award
• Marc Ferrell:
  The Miverva and Carl Wiggers Prize in Physiology
• Muta Abiff: 
  The Harry Resnick Memorial Fund Award
• Katrina Piemonte:
  The Noether Memorial Fund Award

Graduate and Doctoral Excellence Awards 2025

Doctoral Excellence Awards are given for Original Scholarly Work, Significant Contribution to the Field, and Significant Service Contributions.  

• Eshan King received the award from Systems Biology and Bioinformatics Program

Other Awards 2024-25

• Christina MacAskill received the Outstanding Biomedical Engineering Student Award and was also named the 2024 inaugural Young Investigator awardee for the Research Institute for Children's Health
• Walter Zhao was the recipient of the Hiro Fujita Award, a top imaging trainee award.  Walter also won the 2024 Excellence in Mentorship award
• Razaq Durodoye was named as a 2024-2026 Human Genetics Scholar by The American Society of Human Genetics
• Kayla Klatt received the Lenore A. Kola Graduate Student Community Service Award
• Claire Fritz received the Graduate Student Appreciation Award

PhD Defenses 2025

• Sarah Barker "Traumatic brain injury induced acceleration of aging related neurodegenerative disease"
• Melissa Bonner "Piezo1 deletion in CD11b+ Cells imparts context-dependent changes on the anti-tumor response"
• Brendan Boylan "B Cell and stromal cell responses in the brain and its borders during neurotropic coronavirus infection"
• Syrena Bracey "Role of palmitoylation in GSDMA localization and GSDMA-mediated pyroptosis"
• Razaq Durodoye "Characterizing the roles of race, ethnicity, ancestry, and APOE in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease"
• Daniel Feinberg "Exploring regulation of immune cell cytotoxicity and targeting novel tumor antigens to improve adoptive cell therapy for cancer"
• Zachary Grimmett "S-nitrosylation in regulation of signaling through beta-adrenergic receptors and impact on cardiovascular function"
• Natasha Ingles "Elucidating the impact of genome integrity mechanisms in cancer progression and aggressiveness"
• Brian Kim "Asprosin transactivation underlies obesity relapse and inheritance"
• Erik Koritzinsky "Novel strategies to inhibit ischemia-reperfusion injury in high-risk allografts"
• Alexander Lesser "Cystic fibrosis and metabolism: an investigation of glucose metabolism in various models of cystic fibrosis"
• Benjamin Mittman "Artificial intelligence and decision analytics for venous thromboembolism prevention"
• Meghan O'Keefe "Beyond pyroptosis: cellular consequences of inflammasome stimulation"
• Vanessa Salazar "Skin microbiota drive immune checkpoint inhibitor toxicity"
• Josephine Trichka "Regulation of inflammation by a noncanonical activity of the ESCRT protein CHMP5"
• Sabrina Wang "Lipocalin-2 mediated suppression of ferroptosis in glioblastoma"
• William Wulftange "Microengineered systems for advancing hematological precision therapies"
• Jesse Zhan "Investigating the circadian aspect of oligodendroglia biology"
• Walter Zhao "Clinical translation of magnetic resonance fingerprinting for glioblastoma infiltration imaging"

Match List 2025

Our MSTP students had an incredible year. The key here is not only where they went, but where they wanted to go and whether they had options. First choice was once again the rule rather than the exception. 

Students: If you have something new to add, tell us about it here.