Achievements

Awards

  • Jort van der Geest was awarded a CURE-PLaN ECI grant ‘Development of new ideas’, 2021.
  • Francesca Briganti was award a CURE-PLaN ECI grant ‘Collaborative projects between different labs’, 2021.
  • Mena Abdelsayed was awarded in 2021 the Wilton W. Webster Fellowship in Pediatric Electrophysiology from Heart Rhythm Society.
  • Jennifer Arthur Ataam was awarded AHA postdoctoral Fellowship (2020-2022).
  • Isaac Perea Gil was awarded an AHA postdoctoral Fellowship (2018-2020).
  • Mohit Kumar was awarded an AHA Postdoctoral Fellowship (834316, 2021) entitled “Molecular basis of cardiac arrhythmias and hypertrophic cardiomyopathy”, which aim to define the link between sarcomeric function and calcium abnormalities, potentially leading to the elucidation of new therapeutic targets for treating arrhythmias and preventing the early onset of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (07/01/2021 – 06/30/2023).
  • Jeff Crocker was awarded an NIH predoctoral fellowship (F31) in 2020 for 3 years.
  • Irene Turnbull was awarded Leadership in Emerging Academic Departments (LEAD Program) fellow and selected as one of 25 Junior Faculty from a pool of over a hundred applicants to participate in a 12-month program comprised of monthly workshops, supplemented by online videos and resources, personal and peer coaching, and a leadership-focused Capstone Project, from February 1st, 2019 to January 17th, 2020.
  • Irene Turnbull was awarded an NIH/NHLBI R03 in 2020 for 2 years.
  • Irene Turnbull was awarded an NIH/NHLBI R25 Subaward in 2020 for 12 months.
  • Irene Turnbull: Applied Statistical Independence in Biological Systems (ASIBS) 2019 Short Course fellow. Successful applicant in Competitive application to participate in an online and in-person curriculum of applied basic and intermediate statistical theory instruction, January 7th, 2019 – March 1st, 2019.

New positions

  • Dries Feyen accepted a position as a group leader at GlaxoSmithKline.
  • Gregory Antonios accepted a position as Intellectual Property Analyst at Evotec.
  • Irene Turnbull accepted a position as participant in the UC San Diego “Future Faculty of Cardiovascular Sciences” (FOCUS) Program, which is a member of the NIH Programs to Increase Diversity Among Individuals Engaged in Health-Related Research, funded by National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). Cohort 2: June 2020- July 2021.
  • Irene Turnbull serves as Faculty Advisor for the biweekly journal club and data club at the Cardiovascular Research Institute at Icahn SMMS (April 2021- present).
  • Jiayi Pei accepted a position as post-doc at ERA-CVD SCALE consortium (November 2020 – present).
  • Irene Turnbull and Elizabeth Vafiadaki serve as guest editors in the special issue ‘Therapeutic Targets and Personalized Medicine in Cardiac Disease’, Journal Personalized Medicine (2020-2022).
  •  Elizabeth Vafiadaki serves as guest editor in the special issue ‘Molecular Cardiology and Pharmacogenomics’, International Journal of Molecular Sciences (2021-present).
  • Elizabeth Vafiadaki has been accepted to the Editorial Board of BMC Molecular and Cell Biology (February 2022- present)

Successful PhD defences

  • Daniel Kownatzki-Danger defended his Ph.D thesis entitled “PLN – Identification of novel interaction Partners” in June, 2021.
  • Jiayi Pei defended her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Multi-omics dissection of acquired and inherited heart failure” in October, 2020.
  • Julia Menzel defended her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Novel protein-protein interactions contribute to the regulation of cardiac excitation and Ca2+ handling” in July, 2020.
  • Jonas Peper defended his Ph.D. thesis entitled “Proximity and affinity based analysis of cardiac caveolin protein interactions” in February, 2020.