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News from the Ismagilov Lab

2025

MAY

Paulina Naydenkov was awarded the Richard P. Schuster Memorial Prize. This award is given to one or more junior or senior undergraduate students majoring in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering who have shown outstanding academic promise.

Anna Romano was nominated for the Thomas W. Schmitt Annual Staff Prize at the 70th Caltech Service Impact Awards.

Emily Tu has been named a John Stauffer SURF Fellow.

APRIL

Penny Pei has accepted a PhD offer in Molecular Biology from the University of Southern California.

Paulina Naydenkov has accepted a graduate school offer from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

2024

SEPTEMBER

Alex Viloria Winnett has successfully defended his thesis.

JUNE

Paulina Naydenkov has been named a John Stauffer SURF Fellow.

Henry Lane has been named an Ernest H. Swift SURF Fellow.

MAY

Michael Porter has successfully defended his thesis and accepted a position at Enumerix.

APRIL

Alex Viloria Winnett received 2nd place ($2000 prize) in Caltech's Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition.

FEBRUARY

Rustem Ismagilov was awarded the 2024 Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching.

2023

MAY

Jenny Ji was awarded the 2023 Park S. Nobel Prize for Excellence in Biology and Biological Engineering, recognizing an undergraduate student demonstrating outstanding achievements.

APRIL

Alyssa Carter and Jenny Ji have each accepted positions in the PhD program at Stanford University.

Jenny Ji, Michael Anne Bolene, and Roey Lazarovits were each awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.

2022

NOVEMBER

Eric Liaw has successfully defended his thesis.

AUGUST

Alex Viloria Winnett has been awarded a National Institutes of Health NRSA Predoctoral Fellowship.

JULY

Roey Lazarovits has been inducted into the Biotechnology Leadership Training Program. The BLP is sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH (T32GM112592) with additional support provided by Caltech's Rosen Bioengineering Center.

SPRING

Jenny Ji has been named a John Stafford SURF fellow and has won the George W. and Bernice E. Green Memorial Prize for outstanding undergraduate research.

2021

OCTOBER

Emily Savela has successfully defended her PhD thesis.

SEPTEMBER

Mary Arrastia has successfully defended her PhD thesis. Mary has accepted a post-doctoral position at Stanford University.

AUGUST

Jacob Barlow has successfully defended his PhD thesis.

MAY

Mary Arrastia won the McCoy Award. The Herbert Newby McCoy Award recognizes the most outstanding achievements in research by a graduate student in Chemistry.

2020

AUGUST

Ismagilov Lab has launched a community-based study of COVID-19 transmission. Please see https://covid-study.caltech.edu/ for details and updates on the study.

JUNE

Roberta Poceviciute successfully defended her thesis. Dr Poeviciute has accepted a postdoc with Ismagilov Lab.

MAY

Octavio Mondragon-Palomino has accepted a scientist position in P'ng Loke's lab at the NIAID.

Erik Jue successfully defended his thesis. Dr Jue has accepted a position at ALine where he will be working with former Ismagilov Lab member Stefano Begolo.

Matt Cooper has been awarded a CEMI fellowship.

Sarah Simon has been inducted into the Biotechnology Leadership Training Program. The BLP is sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH (T32GM112592) with additional support provided by Caltech's Rosen Bioengineering Center.

APRIL

Matt Cooper has accepted his admission offer to Caltech's graduate program. He will begin his PhD program in the fall.

Hazel Dilmore has accepted her admission offer to UC San Diego's graduate program.

2019

DECEMBER

Dmitriy Zhukov successfully defended his thesis. Dr Zhukov has accepted a position at Chromologic.

SEPTEMBER

Said Bogatyrev successfully defended his thesis. Dr Bogatyrev has accepted a postdoc with Ismagilov Lab.

AUGUST

Nathan Schoepp was awarded the Baxter Young Investigator Award, which is given for outstanding research work that aligns with Baxter's mission of saving and sustaining patients' lives.

JUNE

Tahmineh Khazaei won the Reddy Award, which is given to the graduating female Ph.D. candidate in the Division of Biology & Biological Engineering who has produced the outstanding thesis in the biological sciences for the past year.

Asher Preska Steinberg won the McCoy Award. The Herbert Newby McCoy Award recognizes the most outstanding achievements in research by a graduate student in Chemistry.

MAY

Tahmineh Khazaei, Nathan Schoepp and Justin Rolando successfully defended their theses (all three in the same week!)

Nathan Schoepp was awarded New England Biolabs' Passion in Science Award. This award recognizes those within the scientific community working to solve many of today's challenges: the "unsung heroes" of the laboratory, who are dedicated to their cause. Listen to the NEB interview with Nathan here!

APRIL

Asher Preska Steinberg successfully defended his thesis. Asher has accepted a postdoctoral position at NYU (Kussell Lab).

2018

SEPTEMBER

Asher Preska Steinberg was chosen as the first Caldwell CEMI Graduate Fellow, which is awarded to graduate students doing exciting interdisciplinary research that has the potential to benefit society.

Graduate students Tahmineh Khazaei and Asher Preska Steinberg were each awarded CEMI grants for their proposed research projects.

AUGUST

Our proposal on IBD research won the Kenneth Rainin Innovator Award.

JULY

Grad student Jacob Barlow was invited to join the Biotechnology Leadership Training Program. The BLP is sponsored by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences at NIH (T32GM112592) with additional support provided by Caltech's Rosen Bioengineering Center.

MAY

Ismagilov Lab has been awarded a grant by CARB-X (Combating Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria) to develop a rapid, phenotypic antibiotic susceptibility test (AST) for Neisseria gonorrhoeae, which is high on the WHO's Priority Bacterial Pathogens list. This CARB-X project will build upon the digital AST (dAST) that was invented in Ismagilov Lab (see Schoepp et al. 2017 and Schoepp et al. 2016). The dAST uses ultrasensitive detection of changes in nucleic acids to determine whether a pathogen is susceptible to a particular antibiotic. Current lab members who have contributed to this work or will be contributing to this work include (in alphabetical order): Jacob Barlow, Matthew Curtis, Erik Jue, Tahmineh Khazaei, Eugenia Khorosheva, Eric Liaw, Emily Savela, and Nathan Schoepp. JOIN US! We are seeking additional talented students and postdocs to join this project.  Please see our POSITIONS page.

2017

NOVEMBER

Grad student Nathan Schoepp and recent graduate Travis Schlappi won the Silver at the Collegiate Inventors Competition.

OCTOBER

Postdoc Daan Witters and grad student Erik Jue won the Hochuen Portable Microfluidic Award at microTAS 2017.

AUGUST

Grad student Travis Schlappi successfully defended his PhD thesis and accepted a position as an assistant professor in the School of Applied Life Sciences at Keck Graduate Institute.

MAY

Post-doc Octavio Mondragon-Palomino was awarded a Burroughs Wellcome Fund CASI (Career Awards at the Science Interface).

MARCH

Grad students Mary Arrastia and Lealia Xiong received NSF fellowships.

FEBRUARY

Grad student Travis Schlappi won the Diagnostics World Early Innovator award for his presentation on the digital antibiotic-susceptibility test (dAST) being developed in the lab.

Post-doc Sujit Datta accepted a tenure-track faculty position at Princeton University.