UNC Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center recently recognized, in a virtual ceremony, several outstanding researchers for their excellence and hard work in the cancer field.
Pagano Award
Hao Guo, PhD, Christine Roden, PhD, and Chase Andrew Weidmann, PhD, were selected for the Pagano Award through a competitive process for the honor, which comes with a $3,000 award.
The Pagano Awards are named for Joseph Pagano, MD, UNC Lineberger director emeritus and Lineberger Professor of Cancer Research. Pagano was the founding director of the cancer center and its postdoctoral training program.
Funded by a gift from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, the awards were established in 2002 to recognize noteworthy papers authored by UNC Lineberger’s postdoctoral fellows and published in high-impact journals.
“The Pagano Award represents a special recognition of the hard work and amazing discoveries made by our postdoctoral fellows. The selection process is always extremely difficult, as we receive so many high impact and exciting papers to look at,” said UNC Lineberger’s Brian Strahl, PhD, professor and interim chair in the UNC School of Medicine Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, who chaired the award committee.
Guo’s paper “Multi-omics analyses of radiation survivors identify radioprotective microbes and metabolites” solidified her position as a finalist.
Roden wrote and submitted her paper on “Genomic RNA Elements Drive Phase Separation of the SARS-CoV-2 Nucleocapsid” in the journal Molecular Cell.
Finalist Weidmann earned the Pagano award with his paper titled “Analysis of RNA-protein networks with RNP-MaP defines functional hubs on RNA” in the journal Nature: Biotechnology.
“This year’s awardees were chosen based on several outstanding characteristics that included great independence in leading the project, along with the fact that the paper resulted in groundbreaking discoveries that led to major advances the field,” Strahl said.
Graduate Fellow Awards in Basic Science
UNC Lineberger also recognized two predoctoral fellows with the Graduate Fellow Awards in Basic Science.
Juan Carvajal Garcia in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Dan Michaud, PhD candidate in Cell Biology and Physiology from the Yuliya Pylayeva-Gupta Lab were both selected for their excellence in basic science.
The Graduate Fellow Awards in Basic Science is an annual competitive award is available for up to three outstanding graduate students in the research programs of cancer center members who have active, peer-reviewed grant support.
“The Lineberger Graduate Award recognizes the Cancer Center’s top PhD students for not only their superb research studies but also for service to the University of North Carolina as well as outreach to the local community” said Bernard Weissman, PhD, associate Co-Chair of Education and Training for UNC Lineberger. “We applaud this year’s winners for their outstanding achievements in all these areas.”
Each award winner also receives a $3,000 prize, which is funded by private donations.