The BSD Chicago Fellows Program is an internationally competitive postdoctoral fellowship program supporting the career advancement of exceptional and creative postdoctoral scientists. We are pleased to announce that this year’s fellowships have been awarded to the following group of early-career researchers:
CHICAGO FELLOWS
- Francisco Henao Diaz will be joining the Department of Ecology & Evolution this fall, following completion of his PhD from the University of British Columbia. Under the mentorship of Trevor Price, Francisco will study the biogeography of extinction rates through time, untangling the effect of geographic range on extinction risk.
- Bei Liu earned his PhD from Duke University and has already joined the laboratories of Chuan He (Departments of Chemistry) and Tao Pan (Biochemistry & Molecular Biology). Bei’s research project will focus on transcriptome-wide mapping of snoRNA targets.
- Román Ramos Báez is expecting to graduate from the University of Washington this summer. They will join Joseph Thornton’s laboratory (Departments of Ecology & Evolution, and of Human Genetics) this fall to study the evolutionary origins of the auxin signaling pathway.
- Madeline Rollins, a recent graduate from Northwestern University will carry out her fellowship under the joint mentorship of Robert Keenan (Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology) and Jotham Austin (Department of Molecular Genetics & Cell Biology). Using electron cryotomography, Madeline will study the structure and function of the multipass translocon in native membranes.
- Giacomo Valle received his PhD from the Biorobotics Institute at Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Italy. Currently he is a postdoctoral fellow at the Laboratory for Neuroengineering, Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, at the ETH in Switzerland. Giacomo will join Sliman Bensmaia’s group in the Department of Organismal Biology & Anatomy this fall. He will investigate the brain-computer interface that restores touch sensations via microstimulation of the somatosensory cortex.
DUCHOSSOIS FAMILY INSTITUTE (DFI) FELLOW
- Deepti Sharan earned her PhD from Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. Under the mentorship of Samuel Light in the Department of Microbiology and DFI, Deepti will concentrate her research on identifying essential colonization factors for anti-inflammatory Clostridial members of the gut microbiota.
We congratulate the Fellows, and their faculty mentors, for this recognition, and welcome them to the University of Chicago.
