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Three UNC graduate students were awarded International Predoctoral Fellowships by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Onur Dagliyan, Alakananda Das, and Mira Pronobis each received a $43,000 fellowship.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute awarded the fellowships to 50 promising students from 19 countries. The program, now in its second year, is designed to support international students during their third to fifth years of graduate school in the United States.

Onur Dagliyan of Turkey is studying visualization and manipulation of protein activity in living cells in the labs of UNC Lineberger faculty members Klaus Hahn, PhD, and Nikolay Dokholyan, PhD.

Alakananda Das of India is elucidating the mechanism of the Che-12-dependent ciliogenesis through in vivo, biochemical and structural analysis in the lab of UNC biology assistant professor Kevin Slep, PhD.

Mira Pronobis of Germany is defining the catalytic cycle of the beta-catenin destruction complex and its interface with the E3-ligase in the lab of Mark Peifer, PhD, Hooker Distinguished Professor of Biology and a UNC Lineberger faculty member.

William R. Galey, program director for HHMI’s graduate and medical education programs, said, “We are pleased to be able to support some of the world’s most outstanding graduate students in the biomedical sciences. These students have been accepted to prestigious graduate programs in the United States and have demonstrated to the faculty of those programs that they have exceptional talent. We see these students as having the potential to become scientific leaders throughout the world once they have completed their training.”