Audience Choice

Honors Biomedical Sciences Student Ahad Azimuddin in McConnell's UHCOP Lab Wins Poster Award at UH Undergraduate Research Day

UH Honors Biomedical Sciences undergraduate student Ahad Azimuddin was recognized with the Audience Choice Award for his UH Undergraduate Research Day poster presentation that was based on his work in the lab of UHCOP Associate Professor Bradley K. McConnell, Ph.D., FAHA.

Azimuddin's project was entitled "Cardiac Calcium Cycling in Fortilin Deficient Mice." His coauthors were UHCOP Pharmacology doctoral student Santhosh Suryavanshi; recent UH graduate Sadia Ahmad, now a graduate student at The University of Texas-San Antonio; UHCOP Pharmacology alumnae Abeer Rababa'h, Ph.D. ('13), assistant professor at Jordan University of Science and Technology, and Sonal Singh, Ph.D. ('15), postdoctoral fellow at the University of Florida; Faisal Fa'ak, M.D., research scholar at UHCOP; The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston's Decha Pinkaew, research scientist, and Ken Fujise, M.D., FACC, FACP, FAHA, FSCAI, director fo the Division of Cardiology; and McConnell.

Two other UH undergraduate students presented their UHCOP-based lab projects at the 11th Annual URD event:

Moawiz Saeed, a Honors Biomedical Sciences student and Student Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) recipient also working in McConnell's lab, who presented "Cloning Human mAKAP Mutations into Lentiviral Vectors for Expression in Cardiomyocytes"; and

Adelle Flores, a SURF student whose project – "The Role of Prostacyclin in Alzheimer’s Disease" – was based on her work with UHCOP Associate Professor Jason Eriksen, Ph.D. Flores also was featured in a UH Moment video about the SURF program.

Undergraduate Research Day is organized and hosted by the UH Office of Undergraduate Research.