Congratulations 2023 Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) Awardees!
Postdoctoral Affairs is pleased to announce the 2023 Postdoctoral Research Development Grant (PRDG) awardees winners. PRDGs were established to support University of Arizona postdoctoral scholars in the development of their independent research skills to advance their career goals. The awardees will go on to conduct an independent research project (New Project PRDG) or obtain additional training specific to their field (New Skills PRDG). Congratulations!
Applications for the PRDGs (New Project; New Skills Training) are accepted annually. The new award cycle will begin in 2024. Click here for more information about the PRDGs.
Marjan Aghajani
Dr. Aghajani will expand on her work in the area of cardiovascular diseases by activating proteins which should mitigate stress placed on the cardiovascular system and help regulate cell death.
Suzann Duan
Dr. Duan’s project intends to determine what role Hedgehog signaling plays in the neoplastic transformation of neural crest-derived cells.
Alane Blythe Dy
Dr. Dy will use this award to purchase reagents necessary to establish enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) in order to detect circulating autoreactive antibodies that are reproducibly associated with phenotypic indicators of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
Lorenzo Federici
Dr. Federici will be testing the effectiveness and robustness of deep learning algorithms for interplanetary mission applications.
Jay Goldberg
Dr. Goldberg is looking at how genetic variation in tobacco hornworm populations is related to the diversity of host plants that they interact with.
Angela Greenman
Dr. Greenman will travel to the University of Washington where she will receive training on the adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector technique to broaden her molecular biology toolkit.
Zhen Li
Dr. Li will receive training in a laboratory soil incubation experiment at Florida State University with hopes of bringing new insights to the incubation strategy.
Valeria Pfeifer
Dr. Pfeifer's project will extend her dissertation work on the emotional impact of verbal irony from perceiving irony to producing irony.
Mark Sundman
Dr. Sundman’s project will explore the influence of exogenous ketone supplementation on cognitive aging.
Hang Zeng
Dr. Zeng will attempt to reduce carbon emissions by using CO2 gas to cure concrete and monitoring the effectiveness of this method with ultrasonic technology.
Liang Zhang
Dr. Zhang aims to enhance the interpretability of decision-making processes in deep learning models in the field of AI. This will be achieved through a comprehensive evaluation of these models, leading to a better understanding of their inner workings and enabling the identification of potential system threats and flaws.