2023 Annual Research Day

The School of Graduate Studies was pleased to hold the centerwide ANNUAL RESEARCH DAY on Wednesday, April 19^th, 2023.

The day consisted of three poster sessions, a platform session for graduate students, and finally, a dinner for all participants.

The annual GRADUATE DAY lecture will be held on May 4th, at 2pm. The speaker will be Dr. Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, an alumna, and CEO and Director of Scientific Affairs at Cancer Research Institute, NYC. Her talk, "Options, Choices, and Impact: A Career in Scientific Research." will be presented in Alumni Auditorium.

Dr. Jill O'Donnel-Tormey

Participation in Annual Research is mandatory for all students in the School of Graduate Studies in SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University past their second year. Graduate students in year 1 or 2 are encouraged to participate.

Only students in the School of Graduate Studies are eligible to compete for awards or present at the platform session, but other entities on the campus may use the Research Day mechanisms present their research findings, and to score and award prizes to their students or employees at the poster sessions.

This year's results are as follows:

Annual Research Day 2023 Results
Name	Title	Program	Sponsor	Sponsor's or Advisor's Department
Dr. Joe Ma and Dr. Sophie Su First Prize in the Oral Session - $2,000
Rachel Furhang	Impact of Tau Isoform Expression on Memory and Phosphorylated Tau Accumulation after Traumatic Brain Injury	Neural & Behavioral Science	Dr. Peter Bergold	Physiology & Pharmacology
Dr. Joe Ma and Dr. Sophie Su Second Prize in the Oral Session - $1,500
Aditi Naik	Enzymatic Removal of Hyaluronan Slows Down Extracellular Diffusion of Molecules With Physiologically Relevant Sizes in Mouse Brain	Neural & Behavioral Science	Dr. Sabina Hrabetova	Cell Biology
Third Prize in the Oral Session - $1,000
Isaac Vingan	Mapping Spatial Memory Associated Gene Expression Profiles Across the Sub-regions of the Mouse Hippocampus	Neural & Behavioral Science	Dr. Juan Marcos Alarcon	Pathology
Mulin He	Adipose tissue phosphatidylcholine remodeling modulates insulin signaling	Molecular & Cellular Biology	Dr. Xian-Cheng Jiang	Cell Biology
Dr. May Kin Ho and Michael Dean First Prize in the Poster Session - $1500
Quiana Jones	Structural investigation of sphingomyelin synthase related protein via catalytic domain engineering	Molecular & Cellular Biology	Dr. Xian-Cheng Jiang	Cell Biology
Dr. Joe Ma and Dr. Sophie Su Second Prize in the Poster Session - $1,000
Benjamin Tessler	Minimally-invasive electric stimulation techniques to target hippocampal theta in the urethane-anesthetized rat	Biomedical Engineering	Dr. Steve Fox and Dr. Jeffrey Goodman	Physiology & Pharmacology, and Institute for Basic Research, S.I.
Third Prize in the Poster Session - $1,000
Ana Mejia Bautista	Anti-epileptogenic effects of early administration of brivaracetam in rats after severe traumatic brain injury	Neural & Behavioral Science	Dr. Douglas Ling and Dr. Jeffrey Goodman	Physiology & Pharmacology, and Institute for Basic Research, S.I.
Andrew Wang	Design and Validation of Collagen-Targeted Protein Nanomicelles for the Imaging of Non-Alcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH)	Biomedical Engineering	Dr. Jin Montclare	Downstate Medical Center and the Polytechnic Institute of New York University
Joao Moreira	Computational Model of the Ventral Posteromedial Thalamic Circuit	Neural & Behavioral Science	Dr. Salva Dura-Bernal	Physiology & Pharmacology

Participation is encouraged for SUNY Downstate College of Medicine students, Public Health students, College of Nursing students, School of Health Professions students, post-doctoral fellows, graduate medical fellows, residents and undergraduates who are associated with SUNY Downstate Medical Center faculty members. Chairs or heads of departments should contact the School of Graduate Studies to identify their participants and who will be receiving the data.

For the poster sessions, the size of the posters is not larger than 60" wide x 40" top to bottom, and the applicant is responsible for producing their own poster.

Annual Research Day provides an excellent occasion for the entire Downstate community to share the results of their research efforts. In early 2023, a link to instructions will be provided along with a sample application. The application opened on February 1st and close on February 22nd.

The schedule for the day will be:

Time	Event	Area
10:00am – 11:45pm	Poster session A	PHAB A,B & C
12:00pm - 1:45pm	Poster session B	PHAB A,B & C
2:00pm - 3:45pm	Poster session C	PHAB A,B & C
2:00pm – 4:30pm	Graduate Student Platform Presentations	PHAB 2B
6:00 pm –	Annual Research Day Dinner Reservation Form	Pacific Palace - 813 55th Street, Brooklyn

Each DHSU College or School will determine participation expectations for its students and trainees, including whether or not presentations will be judged by its faculty. All SGS graduate students who are past their second year (excluding those students who have officially scheduled their final thesis defense) are required to make a presentation (poster or platform). SGS graduate students in year 1 or 2 are encouraged to participate.

SGS will award a limited number of prizes and travel fellowships to its students for the best presentations, as determined by judges. The Joe Ma and Sophie Su prizes will be awarded for two platform session presentations and one poster presentation. The May Kin Ho and Michael Dean prize will be awarded for a poster session presentation. Additionally, poster session prizes will be awarded to Graduate Studies presentations by the School of Graduate Studies.

We look forward to all of the presentations of the science of Downstate.