October's recipients are Tarique Abdalla and Heather Lai

On Friday, October 17, we celebrated our Medical Laboratory Science students who received the David and Pamela Buhr Medical Laboratory Sciences Excellence Fund. Hanna Gee and Lexi McIntyre are fourth year students in the program who will begin clinicals next semester. Hanna will be completing her clinicals here in Iowa City and Lexi will be finishing her final year and clinicals through our partnership with Mercy College of Health Sciences.

Payton Kahl successfully defended her M.S. thesis on October 3rd, 2025 and completed the Pathology M.S. Program.

Featuring: Abdelrahman Barakat, MBBCh; Adam Dupuy, PhD; Zizhen Kang, PhD; Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD; Huy Gia Vuong, PhD; Yuhang Wang, PhD; Yiqin Xiong, PhD; Meeta Yadav, MBBS, DCH

University of Iowa Health Care’s rare “brain bank” has contributed to a new study published in Nature that shows that repetitive head impact (RHI)-related brain injuries result in brain cell loss, inflammation, and vascular damage in young, former contact sport athletes. Importantly, many of these detrimental changes were seen in young athletes before the onset of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain condition that leads to problems with thinking and emotional regulation.

Featuring: Sudeep Ghimire, PhD; Peter Lehman, MS; Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD; Apruva Patel, PhD; Meeta Yadav, MBBS, DCH

Aditya Joglekar and Quynh Pham, mentored by Nitin Karandikar, MD, PhD and Shujie Yang, PhD, were presented with the Richard G. Lynch Award Excellence in Pathology Research at the Medical Student Research Conference.

Featuring: Sudeep Ghimire, PhD; Peter Lehman, MS; Ashutosh Mangalam, PhD; Apruva Patel, PhD; Meeta Yadav, MBBS, DCH

Shravan Kumar Kannan receives Ballard & Seashore Dissertation Fellowship for Spring 2026 Semester. Kannan is an Immunology PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Immunology and member of Vladimir Badovinac, PhD's research laboratory.