Congratulations to Narges Firouzshahi, MS, a doctoral student in Marco Hefti, PhD’s research laboratory, who has received the Graduate College Summer Fellowship for Summer 2026!

The spread of tau pathology through the brain is a key feature of neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease and progressive supranuclear palsy, yet the role of glial cells in this process remains poorly understood. While prior work has largely focused on aggregated tau, far less is known about how astrocytes respond to monomeric tau, which may represent earlier stages of disease. Firouzshahi utilizes her clinical perspective on neurodegeneration and interest in investigating disease mechanisms at both the cellular and molecular level in her dissertation work, which investigates how astrocytes internalize and process tau. Her dissertation particularly focuses on how phosphorylation state influences these pathways and examines how tau exposure alters astrocyte function using human iPSC-derived models. 

The Graduate College Summer Fellowship provides advanced PhD students with protected and supported time to pursue their scholarly research activities, allowing them to facilitate completion of their doctoral degree in a timely manner.