Our former students (Sze Yen (John) Kerk and Alana Mendelsohn), winners of the 2016 Kavli Institute Award for Distinguished Research in Neuroscience

The recipients of the 2016 Kavli Award for Distinguished Research in Neuroscience at Columbia University are John Kerk, a Neurobiology and Behavior graduate student who completed his thesis work in the laboratory of Oliver Hobert, and Alana Mendelsohn, a Neurobiology and Behavior MD/PhD student who completed her thesis work in the laboratory of Tom Jessell.

John’s thesis was entitled, “Diversification of Caenorhabditis elegans motor neuron identity via selective effector gene repression.” In his project, he discovered that unique combinations of subtype-specific repressors selectively, directly, and continuously counteract a master-regulatory activator to sculpt unique effector gene profiles that consequentially define distinct motor neuron subtypes in Caenorhabditis elegans. This work will help us move towards a better understanding of how a nervous system is built. Read the full article