New Faces, New Grants!
People news: The Chung Lab welcomes Dr. Gabrielle Abraham, Ellie Kraichely, and Edward Lien! Dr. Gabrielle Abraham earned her PhD from the University of California, Santa Barbara under the direction of Prof. Omar Saleh. Ellie Kraichely graduated from the College of Charleston and is PhD student in Chemistry. Edward Lien graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and is a PhD student in the Medical Biophysics program at USC Keck.
Awards/Fellowships: Incoming Postdoctoral Fellow Regina Agulto has been awarded a Fellowship from the Provost’s Postdoctoral Scholars Program! She will be graduating from the Ori-McKenney Lab at the University of California, Davis.
Grant News: The Chung Lab has been awarded a 5-year, $2 million Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award from the NIH to understand how intrinsically disordered proteins interact (with each other) on biological surfaces. The project will focus on the physiological function and diseased dysfunction of proteins involved in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.
Lots of good news!
Awards/Fellowships: 3rd year USC undergraduate student George Gemayel was awarded a SURF for the Summer of 2022, providing him $3,000 to cover personal expenses related to summer research.
2nd year undergraduate student Andrea Morfin Valencia was recently chosen as a 2022 Research Gateway Scholar, providing her $2,800 to cover personal expenses related to summer research and other career-building opportunities.
Rio Hondo undergraduate student Roman Leyvas was awarded a Travel Fellowship to travel to SACNAS (Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Latinos & Native Americans in Science) NDiSTEM conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Research Grants: The Chung Lab, in conjunction with the Seidler Lab, was awarded a $225,000 grant from the Daniel J. Epstein Alzheimer’s Research Fund. The project will aim to reconstitute fibrils associated with Alzheimer’s using new, genetic code expansion techniques.
Outreach Grants: Profs. Chris Vaca, Peter Chung, and Anne Leak were awarded a 5-year grant by the NSF to provide research opportunities to community college students at local hispanic-serving institutions, with the intent of increasing retention in STEM fields and eventual transition to a 4-year baccalaureate granting institution. The first inaugural class started in Summer of 2022 and we are excited to recruit the next cohort!
USC acquires a brand new SAXS instrument
In collaboration with the Chung Lab and the USC Instrumentation Fund, the Core Center of Excellence in Nano Imaging has acquired a Xenocs Xeuss 3.0, a cutting-edge small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) instrument. This instrument will enable measurement of structures over a wide dynamic range of length scales (from nanometers to microns) through an extended scattering path and low-background collimation. See more information here.
The Chung Lab has received an NSF Grant
The Chung Lab has received a NSF Grant through the Biomaterials Program to study how phosphorylation can be used to “reprogram” synapsin self-coacervates. As a part of this grant, we’ll also be working to provide research opportunities for students in local community colleges. Read more about the grant here.
Peter wins the 2020 Spicer Young Investigator Award
Peter has won the 2020 William E. and Diane M. Spicer Young Investigator Award. This award recogizes new investigators who have made important technical or scientific contributions that benefit from or are beneficial to the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL) and the lightsource community. Read more about the award here.
Peter will be giving an Award colloquium at the SSRL Users’ Meeting on October 2nd.
The Chung Lab is starting at USC!
I am thrilled to announce that I am starting a laboratory based in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences at the University of Southern California! We currently have open positions for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and a lab manager! Please contact me for details.