Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

MMRI is thrilled to welcome 13 undergraduate students to its highly esteemed 2025 Summer Fellowship program

2025-07-07

(Press-News.org) UTICA, NY – MMRI is thrilled to welcome 13 undergraduate students to its highly esteemed 2025 Summer Fellowship program. For ten weeks, these Summer Fellows will study in the laboratories of MMRI’s principal investigators (PI) gaining invaluable scientific research experience.

This rigorous and competitive program selects students based on academic excellence and demonstrated drive to partake in cutting-edge research programs that include areas of cardiovascular disease biology, autoimmunity and autism.

“We are delighted to welcome these impressive students into MMRI’s coveted Summer Fellowship program,” said Maria Kontaridis, Ph.D., executive director and Gordon K. Moe professor and chair of biomedical research and translational medicine at MMRI. “We look forward to seeing the culmination of their research experiences at the end of this program. This is a testament to our mission, which includes our commitment to training future generations of science and medicine.”

Throughout the program, the Summer Fellows will engage in hands-on research using state-of-the-art techniques, such as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and targeted drug delivery. They will also participate in professional development workshops and didactic lectures on the various scientific disciplines in which MMRI excels. The program will culminate in a graduation ceremony on Friday, July 25, 2025, where the Fellows present their research to MMRI staff, colleagues, families, and community members.

MMRI is proud of its legacy and the success of its fellows, with many moving on to top tier graduate schools, medical schools, pharmacy schools, veterinary schools, and more. It has trained hundreds of aspiring scientists, many of whom have gone on to have diverse careers in research and medicine, some of which have been employed at local health systems, such as Mohawk Valley Health System, or nationally at organizations such as the Lupus Research Alliance. Many of these Summer Fellows have even returned to MMRI as postdoctoral fellows or research assistants, a true testament to the program’s success.

The 2025 MMRI Summer Fellowship program includes:

Maria Kontaridis, Ph.D.:

Natalie-Lorine Barber, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Genesis Campbell, University at Buffalo

Riley Collis, Emory University

Amna Khan, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

Claire Marshall, Rochester Institute of Technology

Sandi Myint, Yale University

Chase Kessinger, Ph.D.:

Willa Pratt, University of Delaware

Zhiqiang Lin, Ph.D.:

Angelina Tangorra, Nazareth University

Jason McCarthy, Ph.D.:

Lucas Constantine, Hamilton College

Nurhaliza Syukur, Utica University

Matthew Nystoriak, Ph.D.:

Cooper Borelli, Boston College

Emma Burke, Bates College

Tongbin Wu, Ph.D.:

Victoria Cioni, Nazareth University

The 2025 MMRI Summer Fellowship program was made possible thanks to the generous support from its sponsors, including:

Alera Group Company Dr. Sidney J. Blatt Burrows Foundation Drs. Atul and Amita Butala First Manhattan Masonic District Mr. Gary T. Forrest Cecelia and Ronald Gouse Hazen B. Hinman, Sr. Foundation, Inc. Health Forward Foundation R⸫W⸫ Walter R. Leong M&T Bank / Partners Trust Bank Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation Drs. Frank Dubeck and MaryBeth McCall The Give Back to Utica Fund/Steven H. Oram UpMobility Foundation Utica Lodge #47 F. & A.M. “We’d like to thank our generous program funders,” said Stephen F. Izzo, principal development officer at MMRI. “Their support is enabling our world-class faculty to train the next generation of scientists to understand and overcome some of the world’s most pernicious diseases.”

about the MMRI Summer Fellowship here:

https://www.mmri.edu/summerfellow/

END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Mass timber could elevate hospital construction

2025-07-07

Picture a hospital and you might imagine concrete, stainless steel or plastic. But University of Oregon researchers hope to make wood — often overlooked in health care facilities — more commonplace in those settings. Exposed wood, they’ve found, can resist microbial growth after it briefly gets wet. During their study, wood samples tested lower for levels of bacterial abundance than an empty plastic enclosure used as a control. “People generally think of wood as unhygienic ...

A nuanced model of soil moisture illuminates plant behavior and climate patterns

2025-07-07

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) — Any home gardener knows they have to tailor their watering regime for different plants. Forgetting to water their flowerbed over the weekend could spell disaster, but the trees will likely be fine. Plants have evolved different strategies to manage their water use, but soil moisture models have mostly neglected this until now. Researchers at UC Santa Barbara and San Diego State University sought a way to move beyond simple on/off models to capture the nuanced ways that plants manage water stress. To ...

$2.6 million NIH grant backs search for genetic cure in deadly heart disease

2025-07-07

Fourteen million people worldwide suffer from enlarged hearts, or hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), a genetic disease that thickens the heart’s walls, making it harder for the organ to pump blood — but many of them don’t know it. The disease is often undiagnosed, despite being the most common genetic heart disease and having contributed to the sudden deaths of numerous high-profile athletes, including players in the NFL, NBA and NHL. Now, Sherry Gao, Presidential Penn Compact Associate Professor in Chemical ...

Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program changed drastically when anxiety was added as a qualifying condition

2025-07-07

PITTSBURGH, July 7, 2025 — Within months of Pennsylvania’s medical cannabis program adding anxiety as a qualifying condition, that diagnosis quickly rose to become the most common for cannabis certifications, according to a study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Johns Hopkins University. The study was published today in Annals of Internal Medicine. To date, 39 states have medical cannabis programs, with chronic pain and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) historically being the most ...

1 in 5 overweight adults could be reclassified with obesity according to new framework

2025-07-07

Embargoed for release until 5:00 p.m. ET on Monday 7 July 2025 Follow @Annalsofim on X, Facebook, Instagram, threads, and Linkedin Below please find summaries of new articles that will be published in the next issue of Annals of Internal Medicine. The summaries are not intended to substitute for the full articles as a source of information. This information is under strict embargo and by taking it into possession, media representatives are committing to the terms ...

Findings of study on how illegally manufactured fentanyl enters U.S. contradict common assumptions, undermining efforts to control supply

2025-07-07

Illegally manufactured fentanyl kills a significant number of people in the United States and Canada every year. Since the emergence of modern heroin markets in the late 1960s, controlling supply has been associated with important reductions in opioid use and harms in several cases worldwide. But these efforts depend on understanding the dominant drug-trafficking routes. In a new analysis, researchers developed an index to compare U.S. counties’ proportion of large seizures against their proportion of the national population. Their findings counter ...

Satellite observations provide insight into post-wildfire forest recovery

2025-07-07

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: JULY 7, 2025 Contacts: Audrey Merket, NSF NCAR and UCAR Science Writer and Public Information Officer amerket@ucar.edu 303-497-8293 David Hosansky, NSF NCAR and UCAR Manager of Media Relations hosansky@ucar.edu 720-470-2073 Using satellite observations to evaluate forest recovery following a wildfire could be an innovative, cost-efficient way to assess the effectiveness of land management practices, according to research published earlier this year. Scientists at the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research ...

Three years in, research shows regional, personal differences in use of 988 lifeline

2025-07-07

Who is most likely to use the 988, the national suicide and crisis lifeline launched on July 16, 2022? Two studies led by researchers at the NYU School of Global Public Health find both geographic differences and personal factors that shape where people might seek help during mental health crises. For instance, people in western and northeastern states are more likely to have called 988 than those in the South; similarly, Democrats are more inclined to say that they would use 988 than Republicans. In addition, more than 10 percent of calls came from veterans. The findings, published in JAMA Network ...

Beyond the alpha male

2025-07-07

To the point Power relationships between males and females are less clear-cut than expected: In most species, neither sex clearly dominates over the other. Evolutionary factors shape intersexual power: Males have power when they can physically outcompete females, while females rely on different pathways to achieve power over males. New findings by researchers at the University of Montpellier, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, and the German Primate Center in Göttingen resolve why male-female power ...

For fish, hovering is not restful

2025-07-07

Fish make hanging motionless in the water column look effortless, and scientists had long assumed that this meant it was a type of rest. Now, a new study reveals that fish use nearly twice as much energy when hovering in place compared to resting. The study, led by scientists at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, also details the biomechanics of fish hovering, which includes constant, subtle fin movements to prevent tipping, drifting or rolling. This more robust understanding of how fish actively maintain their position could inform the design of underwater robots ...

Masonic Medical Research Institute (MMRI) welcomes 13 students to prestigious Summer Fellowship program

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: