Marcus Long, a 3rd yr PhD student in the Graduate Program in Biochemistry who works in the Hedstrom Lab, has been awarded a Howard Hughes International Student Predoctoral Research Fellowship for 2011-2013. This award, which is open only to students at selected universities, is given to roughly 40 international students in the life sciences per year in the US. The receipt of this award reflects strongly on the quality of research conducted in Brandeis, and particularly the interdisciplinary approach taken by principal investigator, Prof. Liz Hedstrom. Application for the award requires a clear research plan, which in this instance involves a novel protein degradation strategy (called IMPED), which was pioneered by Prof Hedstrom and her laboratory. Marcus will play his part in a collaborative effort (alongside lab mates Rory Coffey, Devi Gollapali and established Hedstrom Group collaborators) to understand the mechanism and limitations of this new methodology.
Mehmet Fisek (BS/MS ’08), an alumnus of the Marder lab and undergraduate Neuroscience program at Brandeis, was also among the 48 winners named. Mehmet is currently doing graduate research in Rachel Wilson’s lab in the Dept. of Neurobiology at Harvard, working on olfactory neurophysiology in Drosophila.
See also story at Brandeis NOW.
