UK Grad Student Receives NIH F31 Award for a project started with UK IRC pilot funding
UK College of Pharmacy (UKCOP) graduate student Kaitlind Howard received a competitive grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for a project that previously received pilot funding from the UK Igniting Research Collaborations (IRC) program. Howard is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate from the pharmaceutical sciences program working in Professor Sylvie Garneau-Tsodikova’s laboratory. She works as a chemist in the lab where her primary focus is antibacterial agents through multidisciplinary research. Howard’s work has earned her the prestigious Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award (NRSA) Individual Predoctoral Fellowship (Parent F31) for her dissertation project titled “Development of zafirlukast derivatives against Porphyromonas gingivalis.”
The NIH F31 fellowship is awarded to predoctoral students who display excellent productivity, strong academic record, the ability to develop into an independent researcher, and those that have a supportive sponsor and strong mentoring team. The project focuses on developing new antibacterial agents that specifically target P. gingivalis to treat periodontal diseases, such as periodontitis.
This project was made possible by Igniting Research Collaborations (IRC), a program designed to increase cross-college collaborations at UK. IRC facilitated the collaboration of Prof. Garneau-Tsodikova’s laboratory (UKCOP) and Dr. Octavio Gonzalez (College of Dentistry), allowing two professors that have very diverse expertise and research backgrounds to work together for the good of the Commonwealth.
Fourth-year Ph.D. Candidate Kaitlind Howard