Recently received awards and honors by faculty, staff, and students in the medical and dental schools include:

The UConn Health Board of Directors recently named two new endowed chairs:
Dr. Brenton Graveley, Health Net, Inc. Chair in Genetics and Developmental Biology
Dr. David McFadden, Murray-Heilig Chair in Surgery

Four University of Connecticut employees have been selected as “Women of Inspiration” by the Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund (CWEALF). CWEALF is a statewide nonprofit organization that advocates for and empowers women and girls in Connecticut, especially those who are underserved or marginalized.

• Lana Angelo, Program Coordinator for the Young Innovative Investigator Program at the Connecticut Institute for Clinical and Translational Science, for her leadership in mentoring and training underrepresented students interested in biomedical research;
• Sarah McAnulty, Ph.D. candidate in the Nyholm lab, for her pioneering leadership in creating the Skype a Scientist program;
• Jessica McBride, Manager of Research Communications at the Office of the Vice President for Research, University of Connecticut, for her passion and commitment to highlighting innovative research discoveries; and,
• Brandi Welles, Research Assistant at the Southeast HIV and AIDS Research and Evaluation (SHARE) project at the Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP), for her role in creating positive health outcomes for individuals with HIV and AIDS.

Albert Cheng, 33, has been named to CT Magazine’s 40 Under 40: Class of 2018. A genome engineer with a Ph.D. from MIT, Cheng became an assistant professor at the Jackson Laboratory and UConn Health at age 31. A rising star in the field, he is building a molecular “operating system” for the genome called “Casilio” that will advance the abilities of the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool. He moved to the U.S. from Hong Kong a decade ago and has since contributed to more than 30 scientific publications and several patents, some of which have been licensed by biopharmaceutical startups. He has recently been awarded a multi-million dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a new genome-engineering technologies.

Timothy Mason, UConn undergraduate student, is the recipient of the Cato T. Laurencin, M.D., Ph.D. Travel Fellowship  Award from the Society for Biomaterials. The award supports under-represented minorities in the field of biomaterials by providing an undergraduate student resources to attend the annual meeting of the Society For Biomaterials, and to become a member of the Society. The goal of this initiative is to stimulate/encourage recipients to pursue a career in biomaterials.