Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Award Program
The Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Award Program encourages and fosters the next generation of researchers by cultivating interest in the cause and cure of scleroderma under the mentorship of an established scleroderma researcher.
NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS. Apply by April 30, 2024, 5:00pm Eastern.
2023 Pre‑Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees
Annually one recipient will be awarded the Dr. Arnold Postlethwaite Summer Fellowship. The endowed memorial fellowship was established by the family of Dr. Arnold Postlethwaite and honor’s his career as a scleroderma specialist and his 22-year relationship with the National Scleroderma Foundation’s Medical & Scientific Advisory Board and support group leader.
This year the Arnold Postlethwaite Fellowship Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Award was given to Elfa Beaven from the University of Texas at El Paso. She is currently in the Biomedical Engineering graduate program, working with her mentor Dr. Md Nurunnabi.
The 2023 Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees were:
Helen Jarnagin, Dartmouth College,
Graduate Program: Molecular Cellular Biology, Guarini Graduate School
Mentor: Michael L. Whitfield, PhD
Project Title: Identifying key regulators in SSc adipose derived stem cell to myofibroblast transition
Qinmengge Li, University of Michigan,
Graduate Program: Biostatistics
Mentors: Lam C. (Alex) Tsoi, PhD, John Varga, MD
Project Title: Systemic Scleroderma polygenic risk score (PRS) construction based on transfer learning with Bregman-divergence to solve health inequity of African ancestry population
Qiannan Ma, Case Western Reserve University,
Graduate Program: Biology
Mentor: Radhika Atit
Project Title: Wnt signaling activation stimulates ATGL-dependent lipolysis in mature dermal adipocytes in skin fibrosis
Elfa Beaven, University of Texas at El Paso,
Graduate Program: Biomedical Engineering
Mentor: Md Nurunnabi
Project Title: Myofibroblast selective pro-fibrotic pathway inhibition to treat scleroderma
Enze Xing, University of Michigan,
Graduate Program: Graduate Program in Immunology
Mentor: Johann Gudjonsson
Project Title: Characterization of Pansclerotic Morphea
Chanhyuk Park, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth,
Graduate Program: Molecular and Cellular Biology
Mentor: Patricia A. Pioli
Project Title: Macrophage-Targeted Immunotherapy for SSc
2022 Pre‑Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees
Annually one recipient will be awarded the Dr. Arnold Postlethwaite Summer Fellowship. The endowed memorial fellowship was established by the family of Dr. Arnold Postlethwaite and honor’s his career as a scleroderma specialist and his 22-year relationship with the National Scleroderma Foundation’s Medical & Scientific Advisory Board and support group leader.
The Postlethwaite Fellowship Award was given to Vivek Jani from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in the department of Cardiology. He is currently in graduate school working on his PhD in Biomedical Engineering and is enrolled in the Medical Scientist Training Program. His Mentor is Monica Mukherjee, MD, MPH. Under the guidance of Dr. Mukherjee, his project submitted is titled: Machine and Deep Learning for the Early Detection of Scleroderma-Associated PAH
The 2022 Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees were:
Adegboyega Adewale, Medical University of South Carolina,
Graduate Program: Molecular and Cellular Biology and Pathology
Mentor: Carol Feghali-Bostwick, Ph.D.
Project Title: The role of the IL-6-IGF-II axis in Systemic Sclerosis-Associated Lung Fibrosis
Rithika Behera, University of Pittsburgh,
Graduate Program: Cellular and Molecular Pathology
Mentor: Robert Lafyatis, M.D.
Project Title: Understanding FOSL2 mediated regulation of dermal myofibroblasts in systemic scleroderma
Vrinda Dambal, Boston University,
Graduate Program: Molecular and Translational Medicine
Mentor: Maria Trojanowska, PhD
Project Title: Characterization of secretome of GATA-6 deficient Pulmonary Arterial Endothelial cells and to check its effect on activation of fibroblasts in SSc-PAH model
Vivek Jani, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine,
Graduate Program: Biomedical Engineering: Medical Scientist Training Program
Mentor: Monica Mukherjee, MD, MPH
Project Title: Machine and Deep Learning for the Early Detection of Scleroderma-Associated PAH
Suneeti Madhavan, Case Western Reserve University,
Graduate Program: Biology
Mentor: Dr. Radhika Atit
Project Title: Adipocyte lipolysis is activated by Wnt-induced ER stress
Dillon Popovich, Dartmouth College,
Graduate Program: Molecular and Cellular Biology
Mentor: Michael L. Whitfield, PhD
Project Title: Pathway-Driven Drug Repositioning in Systemic Sclerosis from Omics Data
2021 Pre‑Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees
The Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Award Program encourages and fosters the next generation of researchers by cultivating interest in the cause and cure of scleroderma under the mentorship of an established scleroderma researcher.
The 2021 awards were named for Arnold Postlethwaite, MD, a distinguished scleroderma researcher and 22-year member of the Foundation’s Medical & Scientific Advisory Board, who passed away in January 2021.
The five 2021 Pre-Doctoral Summer Fellowship Awardees were:
Elizabeth Caves, Yale University, Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology
Graduate Program: Biological and Biomedical Sciences, Ph.D. (complete April 2024)
Mentor: Valerie Horsley, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology and Associated Professor of Dermatology
Project Title: Understanding the role of resident adipocyte fatty acids in dermal fibrosis
Wei Dong, University of Tennessee HSC, Department of Orthopedic Surgery and BME
Graduate Program: Integrated Biomedical Sciences (complete August 2021)
Mentor: Weikuan Gu, Ph.D.
Project Title: The potential role of β-Caryophyllene in the treatment of systemic sclerosis
Noelle Kosarek, Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, Department of Biomedical Data Science, Microbiology/Immunology
Graduate Program: Quantitative Biomedical Sciences (complete June 2023)
Mentors: Michael L. Whitfield, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Biomedical Data Science, Professor of Molecular and Systems Biology and Patricia Pioli, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology
Project Title: Using Single Cell RNA-sequencing to Elucidate the Mechanisms of Fibrosis in a Systemic Sclerosis 3D Human Tissue Model
Joe Mouawad, Medical University of South Carolina, Department of Medicine
Graduate Program: Molecular and Cellular Biology and Pathology (complete June 2023)
Mentor: Carol Feghali-Bostwick, Ph.D., Professor of Medicine, and SmartState® and Kitty Trask Holt Endowed Chair for Scleroderma Research, Division of Rheumatology & Immunology
Project Title: The Role of Extracellular Vesicles in the Propagation of Scleroderma-Associated Lung Fibrosis
Helen Warheit-Niemi, University of Michigan, Department of Microbiology and Immunology
Graduate Program: Microbiology and Immunology (complete August 2022)
Mentor: Bethany Moore, Ph.D., Chair, Microbiology & Immunology, Nancy Williams Walls, Ph.D. Professor of Microbiology & Immunology
Project Title: Dissecting the role of neutrophil