The Alfred Stracher Student Author Research Award

2020 Recipients

Christina Williams Agudelo

Christina Williams Agudelo is a first year MD-PhD candidate at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University. Christina conducts research in the Departments of Medicine and Cell Biology under the supervision of Itsaso Garcia-Arcos, PhD and Robert Foronjy, MD. She is investigating the role of lung lipids in pulmonary homeostasis and disease. Pulmonary disease, a leading cause of morbidity and mortality, disproportionately affects the African American population served by SUNY Downstate. In the lung, the pulmonary surfactant lipoprotein complex is essential for effective respiration. Dysregulation of surfactant metabolism is implicated in a range of disease states, from infant respiratory distress syndrome (IRDS) to acute lung injury (ALI). Recently, her advisors’ laboratory reported significant decreases in surfactant lipids, which correlated with lung function, in individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Additionally, to enable future mechanistic and therapeutic investigation, the laboratory generated a mouse model of COPD that recapitulates the changes in pulmonary surfactant observed in humans. The aim of Christina’s research is to further characterize pulmonary lipid metabolism in states of lung infection, injury and disease.

Thomas Monaghan

Thomas Monaghan is a fourth-year medical student in the SUNY Downstate College of Medicine. He carries out research in the Department of Urology and the Division of Cardiovascular Medicine under the auspices of Dr. Jeffrey Weiss, Department of Urology Professor and Chair, and Dr. Jason Lazar, Vice Dean for Education and Chair of the Department of Medical Education. His research focuses on the relationship between urinary symptoms and cardiovascular disease. He has a particular interest in the urologic needs of underserved patient populations, including African- and Caribbean-Americans, the frail elderly, and people living with mental health diagnoses and cognitive deficits.

Sofya Gindina

Sofya Gindina is a third-year medical student in the SUNY Downstate College of Medicine. She completed her PhD in Neural and Behavioral Sciences at the SUNY Downstate School of Graduate Studies under the mentorship of Dr. John Danias, Professor of Ophthalmology and Cell Biology and Chairman of the Department of Ophthalmology. As a researcher, her work focuses on discovering the underlying mechanisms of steroid-induced glaucoma and developing novel therapeutic strategies to treat glaucoma. In particular, her work has shown a potential application for the fibrinolytic agent, tissue plasminogen activator, in animal models of the disease. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness worldwide and poses a heavy societal burden, making it imperative to generate targeted treatment approaches through an understanding of the underlying pathophysiology of the disease. Sofya Gindina has a research interest in the utilization of gene therapy for neuroprotection in glaucoma.