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Agenda for the 2020 virtual University of Massachusetts Medical School Research Retreat.

Moderator: Dr. Roger Davis, Chair and Professor in Molecular Medicine

Presenters:

Dr. TengTing (Elaine) Lim, Assistant Professor, Program in Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology and Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology: “Multiplexing and demultiplexing with cerebral organoids for neurological diseases”

Dr. William Flavahan, Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology: “Insulator dysfunction and epigenetic alterations as tumor drivers"

Dr. Marcus Ruscetti, Assistant Professor, Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology: "Harnessing cellular senescence for cancer immunotherapy”

Moderator: Dr. Marian Walhout, Professor, Program in Molecular Medicine and Co-Director, Program in Systems Biology

Presenters:

Dr. Travis Thomson, Assistant Professor, Neurobiology: “All hail our viral overloads - Traversing synaptic plasticity with transposons”

Dr. Rigel Chan, Assistant Professor, Neurology: “Multiplex pooled in-vitro modeling for genetic studies”

Dr. Milena Bogunovic, Associate Professor, Pathology: “Heterogeneity and function of intestinal macrophages"

List of poster session presentations for the 2020 virtual University of Massachusetts Medical School Research Retreat.

Moderator: Dr. Kendall L. Knight, Associate Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology

Presenters:

Maureen Hester, Division of Infectious Disease and Immunology (Stu Levitz lab): “Antigen specificity and cross reactivity in vaccine-mediated protection against cryptococcosis”

Xue Li, Bioinformatics and Integrative Biology (Elinor Karlsson lab): “Investigating the genetics of social behavior in wolf-dog hybrids”

Nicholas Rice, Program in Molecular Medicine (Bill Theurkauf lab): “Heat stress disrupts piRNA biogenesis machinery”

Moderator: Dr. Mary Ellen Lane, Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and Professor, Neurobiology

Presenters:

Sneha Shah, Program in Molecular Medicine (Joel Richter lab): “FMRP loss alters the epigenetic landscape and alternative splicing of mRNAs in Fragile X Syndrome”

Emmanouela Tsagkaraki, Program in Molecular Medicine (Mike Czech lab): “CRISPR RNP-enhanced adipocyte 'browning' as cell therapy for metabolic disease”

Khursheed Wani, Laboratory of Comparative Immunology (Javier Irazoqui lab): “NHR-49/PPAR-α and HLH-30/TFEB cooperate for C. elegans host defense via a flavin-containing monooxygenase“

Virtual Poster Session #2 (see Poster Session agenda for presenter details) for the University of Massachusetts Medical School Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences 25th Annual Research Retreat, held online on October 26-27, 2020.

Full-text posters made available by presenters in this session:

"A ThinPrep Cytopathology of Cutaneous Meningioma with Histologic Correlation," Ahmed M. Alhusseiny MD, Rukmini M. Kashikar MD

Virtual Poster Session #3 (see Poster Session agenda for presenter details) for the University of Massachusetts Medical School Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences 25th Annual Research Retreat, held online on October 26-27, 2020.

The Dan Mullen Poster Awards to best graduate student posters at the research retreat, presented by:

Dr. Kendall L. Knight, Associate Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

Dr. Mary Ellen Lane, Dean, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences

2020 Dan Mullen Poster Award winners:

Emily Agnello (Brian Kelch lab) – “Investigating the Self Assembly and Structural Features of a Thermophilic Bacteriophage”

Hao-Ching Jiang (Paul Greer lab) – “Analyzing the Role of MS4A1 in Olfaction”

Christine Carbone (Andrei Korostelev lab) – “Time-resolved Cryo-EM Visualizes Ribosomal Translocation with EF-G and GTP”

Naema Nayyar (Michael Brehm lab) – “Intracranial Responses to Immune Checkpoint Inhibitors in Pre-clinical Models of Melanoma Brain Metastasis”

Moderator: Dr. Beth McCormick, Vice Chair and Professor, Microbiology and Physiological Systems

Presenters:

Dr. Hyun Youk, Associate Professor, Program in Systems Biology: “Quantitative approach to understanding autonomous and collective deaths of microbial and mammalian cells”

Dr. Vanni Bucci, Associate Professor, Microbiology and Physiological Systems: “Machine learning to decouple associations between microbiome, host immunology and clinical outcome”

Dr. James Munro, Associate Professor, Microbiology and Physiological Systems: “Single-molecule analysis of HIV-1 genomic RNA conformation and dynamics”

Dr. Elizabeth Shank, Associate Professor, Program in Systems Biology and Microbiology and Physiological Systems: “Metabolic interactions within microbial communities”

Moderator: Dr. Michael Green, Chair and Professor, Molecular, Cell and Cancer Biology

Presenters:

Dr. Johanna Seddon, Professor, Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences: “Macular Degeneration epidemiology: nature-nurture, lifestyle factors, genetic risk, and gene-environment interactions: clues to therapies”

Dr. Sohye Kim, Assistant Professor, Psychiatry: “Neural markers of social engagement in the first year of life”

Dr. Andres Colubri, Assistant Professor, Microbiology and Physiological Systems: "ORAN: A meta-modeling platform to drive real-life and online outbreak simulations"

Moderator: Dr. Thoru Pederson, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and Associate Vice Provost for Research

Presenters:

Dr. Robert Finberg, Chair and Professor, Medicine: “SARS-CoV-2 and Influenza-What's the difference and why do I care?"

Dr. Celia Schiffer, Professor, Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology: "Structural insights to antivirals against SARS-CoV-2”

Dr. Anastasia Khvorova, Professor, RNA Therapeutics Institute: “Developing RNAi-based therapeutics for COVID-19 in five months”

Closing Remarks by:

Dr. Terence R. Flotte, Celia and Isaac Haidak Professor of Medical Education; Dean, Provost and Executive Deputy Chancellor and Chief Research Officer