Congratulations to the recipients of the Biophysics program’s 2025 student awards, recognizing the achievements of our outstanding graduate and undergraduate students.
We are pleased to offer these awards, made possible by the generous support of our friend and colleague Sam Krimm through the Krimm Endowment established by Sam in support of graduate students in Biophysics.
The Krimm Dissertation Award recognizes a graduate student who defended their dissertation within the past year. This year's Krimm Dissertation Award goes to Guoming Gao for his dissertation titled "Probing the Impact of Biomolecular Condensates on RNAs with Single-Molecule Tracking in vitro and in cellulo." Guoming made many innovative contributions to the Walter group while contributing to the academic community via teaching and mentoring.
The Krimm Outstanding Graduate Student Award recognizes mid-career graduate students who are actively working on dissertation projects. This year's Krimm Outstanding Graduate Student Award goes to Megan Westwood. Megan's work in the Keane group involves structural and mechanistic studies of precursor microRNAs. She is also preparing a manuscript for publication describing how to incorporate NMR analysis of RNAs into a biophysics/biochemistry course.
The Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award recognizes graduating biophysics majors. This year's Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award goes to Joy Liao. Joy has made significant contributions to research in the Penner-Hahn group while being a mentor to her fellow undergraduate students via the Biophysics Club and other program activities.
Congratulations to all the nominees, our awardees, and a big thanks to the members of the undergraduate and graduate affairs committees for their efforts.
