Fred Hutchinson announces Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award winners

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center today announced the recipients of the Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award, which recognizes the outstanding achievement of graduate studies in the biological sciences. The thirteen award recipients were chosen by a selection committee of Fred Hutch faculty members and students for the quality, originality and significance of their work, and for representation of a diverse range of research topics.

The 2017 awardees attend universities across the U.S. — from Caltech to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to Baylor College — and one international recipient who attends the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. Their studies explore areas as far ranging as evolvability and order in the nervous system, how microbiome dynamics may control host immunity and metabolism and innovative treatment strategies for mitochondrial disease.

Named for the late Harold Weintraub, the award honors Weintraub’s scientific leadership in the field of molecular biology and his legacy as an extraordinary mentor, colleague, collaborator and friend. He was passionate about understanding how a certain protein drives cell development, investigating RNA interference, and applying molecular manipulations pioneered in his lab to other areas of medical research, such as stem cell transplantation.

Weintraub helped found the Basic Sciences Division at Fred Hutch and died of brain cancer in 1995 at age 49.

Weintraub Award recipients will travel to Seattle for an award symposium held May 5 on the Fred Hutch campus. At the symposium, recipients will give scientific presentations and have the opportunity to convene with other students and faculty members.

Each awardee will receive a certificate, travel expenses and honorarium from The Weintraub and Groudine Fund, created to foster intellectual exchange through supporting programs for graduate students, fellows and visiting scholars.

2017 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award recipients:

• Thomas Bartlett
  Molecular Biology Princeton University
  

• Lynne Chantranupong
  Biology Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  

• Raphael Cohn
  Neurophysiology and Behavior Rockefeller University
  

• Kelsie Eichel
  Cellular Biology University of California, San Francisco
  

• Qing Feng
  Molecular and Cellular Biology Fred Hutch/University of Washington
  

• Isha Jain
  Health Sciences and Technology Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  

• Daniel Lin
  Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics Caltech
  

• Lucy Liu
  Neuroscience Baylor College of Medicine
  

• Siew Cheng Phua
  Cellular and Molecular Biology Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
  

• Dheeraj Roy
  Brain & Cognitive Sciences Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  

• Sukrit Silas
  Chemical and Systems Biology Stanford University
  

• Christoph Thaiss
  Immunology Weizmann Institute of Science
  

• Candice Yip
  Neurobiology Harvard Medical School