June 3, 2026 - For the last day in the 2025-26 P&P Student Seminar Series, PhD candidate Liz Mancz (Sah lab) presents her research "Airway inflammation and fear: connecting the dots through interleukin-1" and PhD candidate Kajol Thapa (Drosatos lab) presents her research "Tissue-dependent effects of FGF21 in heart failure with preserved ejection fraction". We thank the presenters and the organizers (Liz Mancz and Taylor Peach) for an excellent collection of stories.  

Jun 2026 – At the 2026 International Society for Heart Research North America Section conference, PhD student Georgios Siokatas (Drosatos lab) gave an oral presentation of his research: “Post-transcriptional suppression of the cardioprotective miR-30 family by cardiomyocyte KLF5 and circPRDM5 transcript variants”. Georgios is a UC COM Research Scholar while in a PhD program at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.

June 2026 - The American Society of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) is in session.   Gabby Antro is in Dr. Anna Kruyer's lab with Lucas Wittenkeller as the in-lab mentor. Jenna Goodridge is in Dr. Joan Garrett's lab with Wasim Ferroz as the in-lab mentor. Ava Heim is in Dr. Renu Sah's lab with Corey Foltz as in-lab mentor.  Sean Hendricks is in Dr. Matthew Robson's lab with Olivia Chohan as in-lab mentor.  Cecilia Roberts is in Dr. Bhagwat Prasad's lab with Dilip Singh as in-lab mentor. 

June 2026 - The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIH) has made a five-year, $3.3 M award to Dr. Wang to study the "Impact of micro- and nanoplastics on heart health and disease". Dr. Wang has done multiple tv/radio interviews on this important topic. Read the UC News story here. 

June 2026 – Principal Research Assistant Dana Selm (Ulrich-Lai lab) was honored for her 25 years of service at UC. Congratulations and THANK YOU Dana!

June 2026 – Liz Mancz (Sah lab) will be presenting her work in an oral presentation at the annual meeting of the PsychoNeuroImmunology Research Society (PNIRS). Her talk is titled "How airway inflammation impacts fear memories: Connecting the dots through interleukin-1 signaling" and occurs in a symposium titled: "Psychobiology of the lung-brain axis in respiratory disease: from molecules to circuits"

June 2026 – The American Heart Association has given P&P PhD student Francisca Akhigbe (Gao lab) a New Investigator Travel Award to present her work as an oral presentation at their Basic Cardiovascular 2026 Sciences scientific sessions in July in Boston.