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Congratulations to our 2025 Fozdar Speakers

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11 Fozdar speaker students smiling in a group photo
Top row (left to right): Rachel Johnston, Sydney Holton, Campbell Coleman, Christopher Turner, Gianna Latorre, John Lee. Bottom row (left to right): Shrinidhi Kittur, Charlotte Burgess, Pritika Modhukuru, Faye Berry, Kate Meyer.

The Spring 2025 Fozdar Symposium was held on April 30th, in Chemistry Building 217 from 10:30am-4:30pm. The symposium started with talks from 3 PhD students: Heather Barber (Sarah Kucenas lab) Radial astroglia cooperate with microglia to clear neuronal cell bodies during zebrafish optic tectum development; Katherine Canada (Kevin Pelphrey lab) Functional Protein Clustering Predicts Differential Gene Expression in Autism; and Addison Webster (John Campbell lab) Unraveling the Neural Circuitry of Energy Balance with Molecular Connectomics

The symposium continued in the afternoon with 11 talks from Neuroscience Distinguished Majors (shown above).  We had 9 volunteer judges from the Program in Fundamental Neuroscience, Biology Department, Psychology Department, UVA Brain Institute, and the Neuroscience Graduate Program. We are proud to announce this year's Fozdar Symposium award winners!

Congratulations tor our 2025 Award Winners

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three students smiling with greenery in background
Sydney Holton, Rachel Johnston, and Charlotte Burgess

1st Place: Sydney Holton
Characterizing the Morphology and Connectivity of Geniculate Relay Cell Dendrites and Synaptic Inputs in P14 Mice

2nd Place: Rachel Johnston
Development of a Tissue-Engineered Model of the Blood-Brain Barrier

3rd Place: Charlotte Burgess
Seeking Synthetic Lethal Treatment for Myc-driven Medulloblastoma

Visit the Fozdar home page to learn more.