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Professor Mary Scott has been selected as the inaugural Micron Corporation Early Career Award winner in the College of Engineering. The award comes with $50,000 based on Professor Scott’s research potential and leadership in diversity and due to the connection of her efforts to Micron’s interests.

Calina Glynn (Callie) is a fifth year Biochemistry, Molecular and Structural Biology (BMSB) student in Professor Jose Rodriguez’s group. Prior to coming to UCLA in 2016, Callie received her B.A. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology from Boston University, where she studied Fe-S cluster binding proteins with Dr. Deborah Perlstein.

Callie’s graduate work focuses on uncovering the structures of prion fibrils that bestow them with unique biophysical properties. Prion diseases arise via the self-templated misfolding of the soluble prion protein into pathogenic protease, denaturant, and heat resistant prion fibrils (PrPSc). Callie has uncovered the structure of a protease and denaturant-resistant human prion fibril that explains the unique biophysical properties characteristic of PrPSc using cryo-electron microscopy. Callie aims to uncover differences in the favored fold, stability, and seeding ability of fibrils from disease-associated variants of the human prion protein and other mammalian prion proteins whose aggregation leads to disease.

The title of Callie’s Fowler Fellow talk is “Structures at the Core of Mammalian Prions”.

Dr. Marcus Gallagher-Jones joined Professor Jose Rodriguez’s group in 2017. In the Rodriguez group he has developed pioneering methods in electron diffraction and determining important structures. “Everywhere he goes, Marcus makes a lasting positive impression on colleagues,” said Rodriguez. “He is highly regarded in our structural biology group, is an active member of our NSF-sponsored science and technology center. In short, Marcus is an outstanding colleague and an exceptional young scientist and leader”. Marcus received his bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from Durham University (2010) and his Ph.D. in Molecular Biophysics from the University of Liverpool (2015). While his Ph.D. was awarded by Liverpool, Marcus conducted his thesis work half-way around the world, at one of the most powerful X-ray lasers in the world – the Japanese X-ray free electron laser facility (XFEL) and synchrotron source (Spring-8).

Congrats to Megan Finnigan, a STROBE Undergraduate Research Scholar, for Winning a Poster Prize at the 2021 Advanced Light Source User Meeting Student Poster Competition! This summer, Megan is working with Drs. David Shapiro, Roger Falcone, and Vanessa Schoeppler at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Leyla Kabuli, a senior graduating in music and electrical engineering and computer sciences, is the winner of the 2021 University Medal from UC Berkeley. The 150-year-old University Medal recognizes a graduating student’s outstanding research, public service and strength of character, and comes with a cash prize. Leyla is currently working in Laura Waller’s research group and will continue with the Waller group as a graduate student in fall 2021.

By her senior year, she was fielding offers of full graduate fellowships from Berkeley, Stanford and MIT. She’s sticking with Berkeley for graduate school. “I might be biased, but Berkeley has the best electrical engineering program in the country,” says Kabuli, who was born in Berkeley and raised in Davis, California. She also credits the campus’s culture, diversity and grit for her decision to accept the Berkeley Fellowship for Graduate Study, which provides financial support for five years. As top graduating senior, Kabuli, 21, a simultaneous degree student in EECS and music, with a perfect 4.0 GPA, will speak this Saturday, May 15, to thousands of her peers, in cap and gown, at a campus-wide virtual commencement ceremony.