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Students Highlights

  • November 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates PhD student Afruja Ahmad (Advisor: Prof. Maria Contel) on defending her PhD thesis “Targeting Strategies to Optimize the Translational Potential of Gold Compounds Against HER2-Positive Breast Cancers”.
  • November 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Ph.D. student Sheenam (advisor: Prof. Emilio Gallicchio) on defending her dissertation on “Evaluating the Reliability and Accuracy of Alchemical Binding Free Energy Methods and Calculations”.
  • November 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates  PhD student Andriele Eichner (advisor: Prof. Shaneen Singh) on defending her PhD thesis on “Protein-protein interactions in cell cycle proteins: An in silico investigation of two important players”.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Raven Fisher (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) on receiving the NIH Diversity Supplement.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates William Villasi (advisor: Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) for being selected for the Garil John Hopkins Cancer Research Summer Fellowship.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Kaitlyn Chan (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) for being selected for the UCLA Summer Research Program.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Moshe Janani and William Villasi (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) for being selected for the Fall 2023 Tow Mentoring Program.
  • June  2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Graduate Student Andriele Silva (advisor: Prof.  Shaneen Singh) on receiving the 2nd prize in Science Day (graduate category; May 2023), GMAP4 travel grant for attending AACR 2023 (April 2023), and being selected to attend Compbio 2023 in Singapore (June 2023).
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Igor Semchenkov Pastukhov (advisor: Prof. Shaneen Singh) on receiving a BCCC-CURE travel grant for attending AACR 2023
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Nitu Farhin (advisor: Prof.  Shaneen Singh) on receiving the 2nd prize in Science Day (undergraduate category; May 2023), receiving a BCCC-CURE summer internship (June 2023), and being selected to represent Brooklyn College in 1st  CUNY undergraduate research celebration (May 2023).
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral students Afruja Ahad, Nazia Nayeem, Javier Lopez-Hernandez, and Fatima Aftab on their presentation at the American Chemical Society Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting 2023.
  • June BCCC-CURE congratulates undergraduate students David Aini and Sophia Kebadze for receiving summer research internships from the Chemistry Department and the Brooklyn College Cancer Center.
  • June BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Javier Lopez-Hernandez (Contel Lab) for receiving the BCCC-CURE Summer Doctoral Student Mentoring Initiative Research Grant.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Oliver Turque (advisor: Prof. Alec Greer) who successfully defended his doctoral thesis in biochemistry. His thesis is titled: Singlet Oxygen-Mediated Conformational Flexibility, Antioxidant, and Isomerization Studies in Chemistry and Biochemistry.
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Shakeela Jabeen (Ph.D. Chemistry, June 2022) for being appointed as a chemist at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
  • June 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Raven Fisher (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) on receiving the NIH Diversity Supplement.
  • May 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Samantha Cobos (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) on defending her doctoral thesis.
  • May 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Chaim Janani (advisor:  Assistant Prof. Mariana Torrente) for receiving the CUNY-wide Salk Award.
  • May 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Biology doctoral student Nazia Nayeem (advisor: Prof. Maria Contel) who successfully defended her doctoral thesis “Pre-clinical Evaluation of a Potential Ruthenium-Based Chemotherapeutic Agent for the Treatment of Triple Negative Breast Cancer”.
  • May 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Chemistry doctoral student Samantha Cobos (advisor: Prof. Mariana Torrente) who successfully defended her doctoral thesis “Disordered Protein Aggregates Are Linked to Changes in the Histone Post-Translational Modification Landscape in Disease and Non-Disease Models”.
  • May 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates undergraduate student Fatima Aftab on receiving the Dana Farber Summer Research Internship Program for Brooklyn College students.
  • May 2023:  BCCC-CURE congratulates Yaron Marciano and Nazia Nayee (Contel Lab) for publishing “N-Acetylation of Biodegradable Supramolecular Peptide Nanofilaments Selectively Enhances Their Proteolytic Stability for Targeted Delivery of Gold-Based Anticancer Agents” in the ACS Biomaterials Science & Engineering.
  • March 2023: BCCC-CURE congratulates Justin Chow (advisor: Prof. Ryan Murelli) for his awarding of a competitive Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship from the ACS Division of Organic Chemistry for this upcoming summer.
  • December 2022:  BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Javier Lopez-Hernandez (Contel Lab) for publishing “Promising heterometallic compounds as anticancer agents: Recent studies in vivo” in Current Opinion in Chemical Biology.
  • December 2022:  BCCC-CURE congratulates Yaron Marciano, Ph.D. (Contel Lab) (graduated in November of 2022) for publishing “Encapsulation of Gold-Based Anticancer Agents in Protease-Degradable Peptide Nanofilaments Enhances Their Potency” in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. This work was performed in collaboration with the group of Rein Ulijn (Advanced Science Research Center/Hunter College).
  • December 2022: BCCC-CURE congratulates Chemistry doctoral student Alex Berkowitz (advisor: Prof. Ryan Murelli) who successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Synthesis and Analysis of Novel Troponoid-Based Chemical Probes”.
  • November 2022: BCCC-CURE congratulates Chemistry doctoral student Yaron Marciano  (advisor: Prof. Maria Contel) who successfully defended his doctoral thesis “Optimized Peptide Nanomaterials as Delivery Vehicles for Hydrophobic Metal-Based Anticancer Agents”.
  • June 2022: BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Afruja Ahad and undergraduate student Roberto DeGregorio (both from the Contel Lab) for winning two separate posters prizes at the 2022 Gordon Conference of Metals in Medicine (Proctor Academy, NH, June 26-July 1st).
  • July 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates Biochemistry doctoral student, Shakeela Jabeen, (advisor: Prof. Alec Greer) who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis, titled “Sensitized photooxidation of prenylated compounds: Mechanisms of downstream dark effects and phototoxicity priming.”
  • June 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Luke Nicholls, (advisor: Prof. Cheryl L. Carmichael) for being awarded a Paul C. Notari Research Grant in Environmental Studies to carry out his first doctoral research project. The project will experimentally examine how threat and efficacy messaging about climate change affects distress and pro-environmental behavioral intentions.
  • June 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates Biochemistry doctoral student Andriele Silva (advisor: Prof. Shaneen Singh) who was selected for an all-paid computational workshop (Compbio Asia 2022 COMPBIO 2022 (umt.edu)) in Thailand.
  • June 2022.  We congratulate the following students who were selected as the first cohort to take part in the Mount Sinai Tisch Cancer Center Lay Health Navigators Program: Yanexis Acosta, Amaya Davis, Elizabeth Shevchuk, Sofia Tylo, Misty Chen Zeng, and Zayneb Moflehi.
  • June 2022.  We congratulate the following students who were selected as the first cohort to take part in the Maimonides Cancer Center College Student Summer Internship Program: Elaine Li, Laura Villatoro, Rishab Gera, Iman Siddiqui, Abiha Kazmi, Shan Shan Chen Yan, Fatima Aftab, and Tasfia Rahman.
  • June 2022. We congratulate the following students who were selected for the 2022 Stacey and Michael Garil Summer Internship Program.  These students receive a stipend to support their cancer-related research for Summer 2022 and participate in professional development events: Annabelle Fu (Gerona-Navarro Lab), Devorah Scheinfeld (Gerona-Navarro Lab), Fatima Aftab (Contel Lab),  Justin Chow (Murelli Lab), Masataka Mizuno (Contel Lab), and Michael Kozlov (Torrente Lab).
  • March 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Nazia Nayeem (Biology Ph.D. Program, Contel Lab) who has been awarded a Mina Rees Dissertation Fellowship from the CUNY Graduate Center for 2022-2023.
  • February 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Javier Lopez-Hernandez (Contel Lab) who has been selected as an American Chemical Society Bridge Career & Professional Awards winner for Spring of 2022. This award will support Javier to attend the ACS Spring 2022 Meeting in San Diego in March of 2022, and will provide him with network opportunities.
  • January 2022. BCCC-CURE congratulates Naifeng Liu, doctoral student (advisor: Dr. Devorah Kletenik) for giving the first BCCC-CURE Doctoral Student Talk, “Hallmarks of Cancer Identification Identification from Scientific Literature.” A poster about his work will appear in the upcoming AMIA 2022 Informatics Summit.
  • December 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Biochemistry doctoral student, Avdar San, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, titled “An in silico Approach to Investigate the Structural and Biochemical Basis of the RNA Binding Functions of Nucleolin.” Avdar performed his doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Shaneen Singh.
  • November 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Kirill Miachin (former undergraduate student) who along with other co-authors from the Contel Lab (doctoral student Nazia Nayeem, postdoctoral fellow Virginia del Solar, undergraduate student Anton Krhystenko, and visiting scholar Patricia Appelt) has published as first author ‘Intracellular Localization Studies of the Luminescent Analogue of an Anticancer Ruthenium Iminophosphorane with High Efficacy in a Triple-Negative Breast Cancer Mouse Model’ in Inorganic Chemistry. This work was done in collaboration with the Buccella’s group at New York University.
  • October 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral student Seth Bennett, who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis, “Histone Post-translational Modification Dysregulation Contributes to Toxicity in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Proteinopathy Models.” Seth performed his doctoral research under the supervision of Professor Mariana Torrente.
  • October 2021. BCCC-CURE Congratulates doctoral student Nazia Nayeem (Contel Lab) co-author on the article ‘Self-Complementary Zwitterionic Peptides Direct Nanoparticle Assembly and Enable Enzymatic Selection of Endocytic Pathways’ in Adv. Mater.
  • August 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Shakeela Jabeen. Ph.D. student (Greer Lab). Ms. Jabeen has had success on a photooxidative priming project. She is an author of a paper “A Singlet Oxygen Priming Mechanism: Disentangling of Photooxidative and Downstream Dark Effects” in J. Org. Chem.
  • August 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Oliver Turque, Ph.D. student, (Greer Lab) published a review paper along with Prof. OrretteWauchope “Synthetic Feasibility of Oxygen-driven Photoisomerizations of Alkenes and Polyenes” in Org. Biomol. Chem.
  • August 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Ryan O’Connor undergraduate student, (Greer Lab) for his research efforts in dark reactions that arise following initial photochemicaloxidations using oxygen, light, and photosensitizers. He recently published a highlight “How Tryptophan Oxidation Arises by ‘Dark’ Photoreactions from Chemiexcited Triplet Acetone” Photochem. Photobiol.
  • July 2021. Congratulations to doctoral student Naz Nayeem and former undergraduate student Arefa Yeasmin (Contel Lab) co-authors of the article “Investigation of the effects and mechanisms of anticancer action of a Ru(II)-arene iminophosphorane compound in triple-negative breast cancer cells” in ChemMedChem.
  • July 2021. We congratulate Ph.D. student Naifeng Liu who has been selected to work as an intern this summer at Sumitovant Biopharma, studying the molecular mechanisms involved in cancer development through organizing scientific articles using the Hallmarks of Cancer (HoC) framework. In his internship, he will help implement and improve the current state-of-the-art framework ‘BLURB’ proposed by Microsoft on the HoC task using text mining and NLP techniques, with the goal of classifying scientific abstracts and sentences into corresponding HoC classes.
  • June 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Marek Wlodarczyk, Ph.D. who successfully defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Enhanced Platinum(II) drug delivery for anti-cancer therapy”.  Wlodarczyk carried out his Ph.D. studies at the CUNY Graduate Center with Brooklyn College Professor Aneta Mieszawska.
  • June 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Mina Poursharifi, Ph.D. who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis entitled “Synthesis, characterization, and applications of peptide-coated nanoparticles.” Dr. Poursharifi carried out her Ph.D. studies at the CUNY Graduate Center with Brooklyn College Professor Aneta Mieszawska.
  • June 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Dorjana Lika who successfully defended her Masters’ thesis titled “Ampicillin-Gold(I) complexes as antimicrobial agents.” Ms. Lika has been carrying out her Masters’ studies at Brooklyn College with Professor Maria Contel.
  • June 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Sarah Belh, Ph.D.who successfully defended her doctoral dissertation entitled “Reactive Oxygen Intermediates: Self-sorting Surface Radicals and ‘On-Off’ Sensitizer Function Mechanisms.” Dr. Belh carried out her Ph.D. studies at the CUNY Graduate Center with Brooklyn College Professor Alexander Greer.
  • June 2021.  We congratulate the following students who were selected for the Stacey and Michael Garil Summer Internship Program.  These students receive a stipend to support their cancer-related research for Summer 2021 and participate in professional development events. Fatema Alam (Schvarzstein Lab), Meriem Guttatfi (Lipke Lab), Aiman Hafeez (Contel Lab), Ariha Hamid (Schvarzstein Lab), and Mitchell Porsche (Carmichael and Staniczenko Lab).
  • May 2021. We congratulate doctoral students Javier Lopez-Hernandez (Contel Lab) and Rachele Rameau (Hubbard Lab CCNY/Contel Lab) who have been selected for the Scientists Mentoring and Diversity Program (SMDP) Biotech by the International Center for Professional Development. With this program they will receive: one-year personalized career mentoring & guidance, Conference accommodations, meals and conference registration, Registration for a major industry conference, up to $350 in travel reimbursement, membership to an online career-oriented portal, and networking & career opportunities with major Biotech and Pharma companies.
  • April 2021. Congratulations to doctoral student Naz Nayeem (Contel Lab) on the publication of her first article “Exploring the Potential of Metallodrugs as Chemotherapeutics for Triple Negative Breast Cancer” in Chemistry A European Journal.
  • April 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates undergraduate student Jacob Arevalo (Contel Lab) who got a summer fellowship at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras thanks to the NSF REU-PR CLIMB program (grant 2050493). Jacob will spend two months doing research in person and attending seminars and workshops both in person and virtually during the summer.
  • April 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates doctoral students Yaron Marciano (Chemistry) and Afruja Ahad (Biology) who won one of the two prizes for a short talk presentation (Yaron) and a mention for a poster (Afruya) at the VII Latin-American Meeting on Biological Inorganic Chemistry.
  • March 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates Lauren Bejcek who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis titled “Mechanistic and Synthetic Studies of Oxidopyrylium Cycloaddition Reactions”. Dr. Bejcek has been carrying out her PhD studies at Brooklyn College with Professor Ryan Murelli for the last 4 years and will be starting a position next month as a medicinal chemist at PTC Therapeutics in nearby South Plainfield, NJ.
  • March 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates undergraduate student Roberto DeGregorio (Contel Lab) who is the recipient of one of the 2021 summer internships at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (Molecular Imaging Summer Program). Roberto will receive $6000 as a stipend to attend this prestigious 10-week summer research program.
  • February 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates former undergraduate student Kirill Miachin (Contel Lab) who has been accepted to join the Washington University School of Medicine Medical Scientist Training (MD/PhD) Program.
  • February 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates current and former undergraduate students Arefa Yeasmin and Mike A. Cornejo (Contel Lab) who will join the PhD program in Chemistry and Chemical Biology (at Rutgers University) and the PhD program in Chemistry (at the Graduate Center of CUNY) respectively.
  • February 2021. BCCC-CURE congratulates CUNY Graduate Center PhD Student Daniel Schiavone and recent Brooklyn College graduate Diana Kapkayeva in the (Murelli Lab) on their recent publication in Journal of Organic Chemistry. Their manuscript describes the scopes and limitations of intermolecular oxidopyrylium cycloaddition chemistry when using stoichiometrically equivalent ratios of the cycloaddition partners, and includes some really complex 2:1 complexes which form with high regio- and stereoselectivity. You can read about it here.
  • September 2020. The BCCC-CURE congratulates Undergraduate students Mommina Ashaque and Michael Zatoulovski (Greer Lab) who co-authored a book chapter titled “Photooxidative Vulnerability to Intralipid in Photodynamic Therapy”, in collaboration with colleagues in the Department of Radiation Oncology in the University of Pennsylvania.
  • June 2020. Congratulations to Doctoral student Afruja Ahad (Contel Lab) from the Biology PhD Program, who has been awarded a Tow Fellowship as Graduate Fellow to work jointly at the Center for Molecular Imaging and Nanotechnology (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Prof. Jason Lewis laboratory) and the laboratory of Prof. Maria Contel (BCCC-CURE, Brooklyn College). Afruja will work on a project to develop targeted therapies for breast cancer consisting on antibody drug conjugates and antibody-based nanocarriers.
  • April 2020. The BCCC-CURE congratulates graduate student Lauren Bejcek (Murelli Lab), recipient of the Dissertation-Year Fellowship from the CUNY Graduate Center! The award will provide $25,000 to help support her in her final year of thesis study.