Two GPB student-faculty pairs have been selected for the 2024 class of Howard Hughes Medical Institute Gilliam Fellows.   This fellowship supports graduate students who are committed to increasing diversity among science leaders and desire to become faculty members at colleges and universities.  Learn more about the 2024 student-thesis advisors and Gilliam Fellowship, click here.  Congratulations to:

Chris Castro

Thesis Adviser: Elizabeta Nemeth

Home Area: Molecular, Cellular & Integrative Physiology

Born in Ecuador, and raised in the Brooklyn, NY, Chris received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Brandeis University. He then began working as a research assistant in the Wein lab at Harvard Medical School-Massachusetts General Hospital. At the Wein Lab, he worked on characterization of salt-inducible kinase inhibitors to treat mineral disorders such as osteoporosis. In 2022, he started graduate school at UCLA, where he joined the lab of Dr. Elizabeta Nemeth and Dr. Tomas Ganz elucidating molecular mechanisms of iron homeostasis. His current project involves exploring the role of RNA localization in intracellular iron homeostasis. 

Sara Makanani

Thesis Adviser: Mehdi Bouhaddou

Home Area: Immunity, Microbes & Molecular Pathogenesis

Born and raised in northern California, Sara left her hometown of Salinas, CA, and moved to Los Angeles in 2012. She received her B.S. and M.S. from UCLA in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology with a focus in Evolutionary Medicine. In 2023, she joined the lab of Mehdi Bouhaddou studying signaling networks at the virus-host interface. Her most recent project pairs global mass spectrometry phosphoproteomics with high-throughput cellular assays to identify mechanisms regulating the activity of gammaherpesvirus latency proteins and suggest novel therapeutic approaches to eradicate latently infected cells.