Golden Helix Gives Back – The Winners

         December 18, 2014

Last month, I announced our Golden Helix Gives Back Campaign. During times like this, when funding is tight, we wanted to make a statement to our community. We at Golden Helix are committed to empower researchers and practitioners in the life science field. For those hard working people it is nice to catch a break from time to time.

After our announcement, we were surprised at the volume of inquiries, numbering into the hundreds. While we wish we could help everyone, our team of reviewers had a difficult job to select the three researchers that we felt were most deserving.

Here are the winners:

1. Jafar Jafarzadeh – Cornell UniversityJafarJafarzedah

Jafar is a Ph.D student at Cornell University. His project is “Determining the breeding value of primary synthetic bread wheat for increased grain yield”. The goal is to understand when and how novel variations from the ancestor of wheat were introduced to the gene pool of wheat. This research helps us to better understand, exploit, and improve traits of interest. Jafar will receive a yearly license of SVS.

2. Karolina Pawliczak – Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH)

KarolinaPawliczakKarolina is a Biomedical Scientist at GOSH. She is working on a retrospective descriptive study of the heterogeneity in clinical presentation, molecular mutations, and clinical outcome in children with pediatric Myelodysplastic Syndrome and Acute Myelogenous Leukemia. As part of this work she is developing a comprehensive panel of 50 genes to be used as a clinical service. Karolina will receive a one year license of VarSeq.

 

3. David Denhardt, Rutgers UniversityDavidDenhardt

Dr. David Denhardt is a professor at Rutgers who has early onset dementia. He has done excellent work in an active career as a researcher. Now, he wants to use the most advanced technologies to study his own case. When we heard about his story, we felt that it was a situation that warranted a boost. Golden Helix is providing him with a one year license of VarSeq. On top of that, our team is helping him personally to gather the right data and help him with his analysis.

There is a lot of outstanding work conducted in our community. We are thankful for the excellent support we have received over the many years. Thanks to everyone who applied. And again, congratulations to the winners. We know that you will pay it forward with your outstanding work and dedication to the scientific community.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *