Trainee Accomplishments

OETIS recognizes Sanford Burnham Prebys trainee accomplishments

Congrats to Stephen Sakuma for being the recipient of a highlycompetitive NIH F99/K00 Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Fellow Transition Award through the National Cancer Institute (NCI).

A Ph.D. candidate in the lab of Associate Professor Maximiliano D'Angelo, Stephen was nominated for the award by the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Sanford Burnham Prebys. The goal of the F99/K00 is to “encourage and retain outstanding graduate students who have demonstrated potential and interest in pursuing careers as independent scientists.” For Stephen’s career, this eans developing new approaches for targeting cancer, utimatly shifting his focus to immuno-oncology, where his goal is to identify ways to reduce tumor burden through alteration of the immune system.

Congratulations to Luca Caputo, Ph.D. for receiving >200k to fund his postdoctoral research!!!

Dr. Caputo, a postdoc in the laboratory of Dr. Lorenzo Puri at Sanford Burnham Prebys, was one of 70 recipients world-wide who recently received funding from the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA). His research project "DMD-Related Cardiomyopathy Beyond Dystrophin Deficiency in Skeletal Muscle" will contribute to the MDA's goal of helping people living with muscular dystrophy, ALS, and related neuromuscular diseases.

Tanja Eisemann, Ph.D. (Wechsler-Reya lab), Guillem Barjau Lambies, Ph.D. (Commisso lab), Shanshan Yin, Ph.D. (Adams lab) were selected as the 2022 awardees for the Fishman Fund Career Development Award.

Cynthia Lebeaupin, Ph.D. (Kaufman lab) was selected as the 2022 awardee for the Fishman Fund Fellowship Award

Karina Barbosa Guerra (Deshpande lab) was selected as the runner up for Outstanding Graduate Student at the 2022 Sanford Stem Cell Institute Symposium.