2024

• Congrats to Zoe Fokakis for being awarded the Psychiatry Department T32. Zoe is co-mentored by Dr. Volpicelli-Daley and Dr. Andrew Hardaway in Psychiatry

• Dr Mahoney-Crane sadly left the lab- but she is doing postdoc in Dr. Mark Cookson’s lab at the NIH, so we are excited for her!

• Dr. Nolwazi Gcwensa earned her PhD.

• Dr. Casey Mahoney-Crane earned her PhD.

• Nolwazi’s paper, “Excitatory synaptic structural abnormalities produced by templated aggregation of α-syn in the basolateral amygdala” was accepted to Neurobiology of Disease.

• Congratulations to Casey Mahoney for receiving the Outstanding Graduate Achievement Award from the UAB Office of Student Involvement!

• Dreson Russell will be attending UAB medical school starting this summer to earn an MD/MPH degree (he already has an MBA)! All of future Dr. Russell’s patients will be extremely lucky to have someone who is so thoughtful, dedictated and passionate.

• Congratulations to Sumedha Bobba for being named Outstanding Neuroscience undergraduate student of the year! Sumedha is one of the best students Dr. V has encountered.

2023

• Dr. Singh’s study “Cellular and subcellular localization of Rab10 and phospho-T73 Rab10 in the mouse and human brain” was accepted in ACTA Neuropathologica Communications.

• Laura’s commentary on a recent study by Chocarro et al ‘Neuromelanin accumulation drives endogenous synucleinopathy in non-human primates’ was published in Brain.

• Neuroscience undergraduates Harshita Challa and Eli Berry crushed it at UAB Summer Expo!

• Harshita Challa, Neuroscience Honors undergraduate was awarded the Presidential Honors Fellowship to perform research in the lab over the summer.

• Sumedha Bobba, Neuroscience Honors undergrad, received a Student Presentation award ($300!) from the SENS Research Foundation at the National Conference on Undergraduate research at teh University of Wisconsin.

• Charlie Brzozowski, Neuroscience graduate student, was awarded the Parkinson’s Foundation visiting scientist award to perform electrophysiology in the lab of Dr. Mark Moehle at the University of Florida.

• Abhi Kamath was awarded Outstanding Student in the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program for 2022-2023!

• Casey Mahoney was awarded the UAB Samuel B. Barker Award for Excellence in Graduate Studies at the Doctoral level!

2022

• “Neuronopathic GBA1L444P mutation accelerates Glucosylsphingosine levels and formation of hippocampal alpha-synuclein inclusions” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Neuroscience! This was a fantastic collaboration with Merck.

• We welcome Giuseppe Madaro as a Battelle Institute scholar to the lab! Giuseppe is a PhD student in the lab of Dr. Kurt De Vos at the University of Sheffield, UK.

• Emmanuel Fortuchang, 2021 UAB PARAdiGM summer student, started medical school at Morehouse School of Medicine. We are excited to follow his career path as a physician!

• Laura received the honor of the UAB Outstanding Roadmap Scholars Research Mentor award.

• The lab was awarded funding by the Michael J. Fox Foundation and Aligning Science across Parkinson’s Disease to provide support and perform further characterization of the alpha-synuclein fibril model to help ASAP researchers obtain robust and reliable results.

• Casey Mahoney was awarded the F31 Ruth L. Kirschstein Predoctoral National Research Service Award.

• Nolwazi Gcwensa’s creative ideas resulted in the lab being awarded an American Parkinson Disease Association Research Grant.

• Dr. Luke Fisher left us for his Medical Fellowship in Cognitive Disorders at UC San Francisco- he will be missed!

• Laura was awarded the Dean’s Excellence in Mentoring award.

• Charlie Brzozowski was awarded the Parkinson’s Foundation Visiting Scholar Award. She will be in Dr. Mark Moehle’s lab at the University of Florida this summer learning physiology.

• Abhi was awarded the Barry Goldwater Scholarship- the highest scientific award for undergraduates studying science, math, and engineering!!

• Abhi Kamath, Junior, Neuroscience Honors Program, was selected from a competitive pool of applicants for the 2022 UAB Summer Research Academy.

• Lindsay Stoyka PhD, former lab MD/PhD student matched at her top Neurology residency choice- the University of Michigan!

2021

• Dr. Luke Fischer won the AAN Futures in Neurologic Research Scholarship for 2022. Well deserved! We will miss Luke when he moves to UCSF for his Cognitive Neurology Fellowship.

• Sumedha Bobba is Ms. UAB! Mr. And Ms. UAB is a longstanding scholarship competition at UAB in which students must demonstrate a record of leadership and active participation in extracurricular activities. In addition to do great work in our lab, Sumedha Bobba is a UAB Trailblazer, a member of Alpha Xi Delta, a volunteer for Start the Adventure in Reading Birmingham, or STAIR, and a volunteer for Blazer Kitchen. https://www.uab.edu/news/campus/item/12386-sumedha-bobba-and-banks-stamp-are-mr-and-ms-uab-2022!

• Charlie Brzozowski’s manuscript, “Inhibition of LRRK2 kinase activity promotes anterograde axonal transport and presynaptic targeting of α-synuclein” was accepted for publication in Acta Neuropathologica Communications.

• Nolwazi Gcwensa, Charlie Brzozowski, and Casey Mahoney won the Young Investigator Award for their presentations at the Inaugural International Research Conference on Neurodegenerative Diseases.

• Sumedha Bobba was one of the few freshman awarded the UAB Honors College Presidential Summer Fellowship!

• Dr. Rachel Coleman was awarded the American Parkinson Disease Association’s postdoctoral fellowship.

• Casey Mahoney was awarded the UAB T32 NIH T32 training award in neurodegeneration

• Dr. Lindsay Stoyka’s manuscript was published in eNeuro “Templated α-synuclein inclusion formation is independent of endogenous tau”

• Nolwazi Gcwensa’s manuscript was published in Frontiers of Cellular Neuroscience “Molecular Mechanisms Underlying Synaptic and Axon Degeneration in Parkinson's Disease”

  2020

• Dreson Russell’s poster on the role of GBA in alpha-synuclein pathology was accepted for presentation at the National Conference on Undergraduate Research in April

• Neuroscience Graduate Student Casey Mahoney was named the Parkinson Association of Alabama Scholar.

• Dr. Laura Volpicelli-Daley’s promotion to associate professor with tenure at UAB was approved by President Watts.

• Nolwazi Gcwensa was awarded UAB’s Alzheimer’s of Central Alabama Predoctoral Scholarship.

• Lindsay Stoyka, Neuroscience MSTP and Harry Potter expert, successfully defended her thesis project and earned her PhD. Now it’s off to third year med school! We will miss you Lindsay!

• Megha Viswanathan, Research assistant, decided to attend Oregon Health Sciences University for her Neuroscience PhD

• Charlie Brzozowski, Research assistant, decided to attend UAB for her Neuroscience PhD

• Anner Harris, PREP student, decided to attend UT San Antonio for her Neuroscience PhD

• Baraa Hijaz, Neuroscience Honors undergraduate student, decided to attend Harvard Medical School.

• Virginia Cobbs, Mountain Brook High School student, decided to attend Princeton.