April & May 2025 QCB Newsletter

e-Newsletter Volume 5 Issue 4 | April & May 2025

Personal Remarks by Dr. Remo Rohs

The QCB Department is ending the academic year 2024-25 strong. We had the largest graduating class since we started the QBIO major eight years ago, and we celebrated our graduates with a successful departmental reception.

The QBIO major, now with its sixth graduating class maintains a 100% acceptance rate for medical school, graduate school, and M.D./Ph.D. programs, with excellent placements.

To our graduates, congratulations to you, your parents, and extended families! To everyone, have a great and productive summer.

Remo Rohs, Ph.D.

Department Chair

QBIO Graduation

The QCB Department celebrated this year's class of graduates in a greet-and-meet reception off campus at the corner of Jefferson and Hoover. It was fantastic to see the spirit in this department with the vast majority of graduates and their families and most QCB faculty members attending. All photos can be accessed here (restricted to recipients with USC email).

QCB Faculty

Professor Helen Berman was bestowed the title of Distinguished Professor of Quantitative and Computational by President Folt at the Academic Honors Convocation for Faculty.

QCB faculty Dr. Jazlyn Mooney was awarded an Undergraduate Research Associates Program grant to fund undergraduate researchers working in her lab for the next academic year. The program “provides resources enabling faculty to integrate undergraduates into their scholarly and professional activities.” Please read about the program here.

QCB Publications

CBB student MeiLu McDermott and QBIO graduate Riddhee Mehta, both from Dr. Adam MacLean’s lab, in collaboration with Dr. Evanthia Roussos Torres from USC Keck, published a paper titled “Modeling the dynamics of EMT reveals genes associated with pan-cancer intermediate states and plasticity” in NPJ Systems Biology and Applications. The paper presents computational analysis of a large pan-cancer dataset capturing cell state transitions during epithelial-mesenchymal transition, which led to the discovery of new genes that mark for dynamic cell transitions. Please read the paper here.

QCB faculty Dr. Steve Kay led a study titled “Advancing Clinical Response Against Glioblastoma: Evaluating SHP1705 CRY2 Activator Efficacy in Preclinical Models and Safety in Phase I Trials” published in Neuro-Oncology.  The study shows that, developed in Kay’s lab, novel Cryptochrome (CRY) activator SHP1705, which inhibits BMAL1-CLOCK transcriptional activity, prolongs survival in animal models of glioblastoma, and is safe and well tolerated in humans. Please read the paper here, and USC press release here.

Former QBIO graduate Sanjana Paye from Dr. Doc Edge's lab published a paper titled “Mathematical bounds on r2 and the effect size in case-control genome-wide association studies” in Theoretical Population Biology. Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Drs. Andrei Irimia and Paul Thompson published a study “Genetic Insights into Brain Morphology: a Genome-Wide Association Study of Cortical Thickness and T1-Weighted MRI Gray Matter-White Matter Intensity Contrast” in Neuroinformatics. Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Dr. Cornelius Gati led the study published in Nature Communications, titled "Molecular basis of human GABA transporter 3 inhibition”. Please read the paper here.

QCB joint faculty Dr. Charleston Chiang, as a lead author, published a paper titled “The accuracy of polygenic score models for BMI and Type II diabetes in the Native Hawaiian population” in Communications Biology. Please read the paper here.

Dr. Andrew McMahon, joint QCB faculty and University Professor Emeritus, led the study published in PNAS titled "Dmrt2 and Hmx2 direct intercalated cell diversity in the mammalian kidney through antagonistic and supporting regulatory processes”. Please read the paper here.

CBB Graduate Students

President Carol Folt honored Dr. Raktim Mitra, a recent graduate of the Rohs Lab, with the university’s Phi Kappa Phi Student Recognition Award given to only four graduate students university-wide annually for exceptional dissertation research. 

Dr. Raktim Mitra received the Center for Applied Mathematics (CAMS) Prize for excellence in research with a substantial mathematical component. His dissertation advisor Dr. Rohs accepted the award from CAMS Director Dr. Susan Friedlander and Department of Mathematics Chair Dr. Sheel Ganatra.

Incoming CBB graduate student Tessa Ferrari received an Honorable Mention for the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program. Getting an Honorable Mention this year is a big achievement since the number of NSF awards decreased from ~2000 to ~1000, and fewer than 10 of those awards went to bioinformatics.

QBIO Undergraduate Students

Three QCB students were honored at the Academic Honors Convocation for Students. Brandon Ye was recognized for winning the prestigious national Barry Goldwater Scholarship. Brandon Ye, Raktim Mitra, and Kenneth Nguyen all received university awards.

The QCB Department honored QBIO graduate Brandon Ye with this year's Michael S. Waterman Award in Quantitative and Computational Biology. Brandon is a Barry Goldwater Scholar and will attend Johns Hopkins University this fall for medical school.

The QCB Department honored QBIO graduate Wade Boohar with this year's John Petruska Memorial Award for both his academic achievements and his contributions to the department. Wade directed a student-led research course for several semesters and will continue working in computational research before applying to MD-PhD programs next spring.

The QCB Department awarded the USC QCB Alumni Google Award this year to 10 graduating QBIO students due to the academic strength of this graduating class. The Google Award winners are Peter Chong, Joshua Gabbay, Hirad Hosseini, Yunting (Cathy) Ma, Mahija Mogalipuvvu, Riddhee N. Mehta, Kenneth Nguyen, Justin Wang, Andrew Wilk, and Judy Zhu.

Undergraduate Sydney Bruce in Dr. Mooney's lab won a WiSE Undergraduate Research Experience award. Sydney will continue to study recombination in wild and captive tigers. Her grant will allow her to participate in WiSE Undergraduate Research Experience Program during Summer 2025 term, and then research in Fall 2025 and Spring 2026 terms.

QCB Staff Spotlight

Amazing QCB staff makes it roll! Let us welcome Tanya Moore back from her leave, and applaud Dominque Andrade, Luigi Manna, and Dr. Rokas Oginskis for organizing a fabulous departmental graduation reception in the USC Village.

Upcoming Events

We wish you all a fun and productive summer, safe travels, and new scientific breakthroughs!

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