Stephen Schleicher
Medical students lands brain research fellowship
Stephen Schleicher, a third-year student at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, has been selected as the recipient of a new joint fellowship offered by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the Ivy Foundation.
The new HHMI-Ivy researcher fellowship is for student researchers in the neurosciences, particularly neuro-oncology, and funds research work for one year in a leading national, academic lab.
Schleicher proposed a project with Dennis Hallahan, M.D., former chair of Radiation Oncology at Vanderbilt. The project is titled “The mechanism by which radiation-induced cPLA2 activation leads to signal transduction through Akt and Erk pathways in malignant glioma; finding potential therapeutic targets to increase radiation therapy efficacy.”
Schleicher will begin his project at Vanderbilt in July, and will move his work with Hallahan to St. Louis later in the year. In addition to receiving a stipend for his work with Hallahan, Schleicher will be invited to attend two conferences at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD.
The HHMI offered research fellowships to medical, dental or veterinary students at 44 different institutions around the nation this year as part of its $4 million annual initiative.