GSA announce winners of GSA Poster Awards at 55th Annual Drosophila Research Conference

The Genetics Society of America (GSA) and the Drosophila research community are pleased to announce the winners of GSA Poster Awards at the 55th Annual Drosophila Research Conference, which took place in San Diego, March 26-30, 2014. These awards were made to undergraduate, graduate student, and postdoctoral researchers in recognition of the work they presented at the conference. Their projects, using the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism, spanned a diverse range of topics on the genetic and molecular basis of fundamental biological processes.

"We were very impressed with both the quality of the research and the clarity of presentation by the winning candidates," noted Adam P. Fagen, PhD, GSA's Executive Director. "It is gratifying to see such inspiring work by members of our community so early in their careers. We look forward to hearing much more about their contributions in the years to come. "

The recipients were chosen from 789 posters presented at the meeting, 561 of which were authored by GSA members and therefore eligible for an award.

Postdoctoral Winners

• FIRST PRIZE: Melanie I. Worley, University of California, Berkeley, USA
  Poster Title: "Chameleon: a mutant with an increased frequency of notum-to-wing transdetermination"
  Principal Investigator: Iswar K. Hariharan

• SECOND PRIZE: Malini Natarajan, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Kansas City, MO, USA
  Poster Title: "Genome-wide analysis of tissue-specific effector genes in the Drosophila embryo"
  Principal Investigator: Julia Zeitlinger

• THIRD PRIZE: Naoki Okamoto, RIKEN, Center for Developmental Biology (CDB), Kobe, Japan
  Poster Title: "Regulatory mechanism of the nutrient-dependent expression of Drosophila insulin-like peptide gene"
  Principal Investigator: Takashi Nishimura

Graduate Student Winners

• FIRST PRIZE: Maureen Cetera, University of Chicago, IL, USA
  Poster Title: "Epithelial rotation promotes the global alignment of contractile actin filaments during Drosophila egg chamber elongation"
  Principal Investigator: Sally Horne-Badovinac

• SECOND PRIZE: Gavin R. Rice, University of California, Davis, USA
  Poster Title: "Molecular mechanism behind the evolution of a novel sex-specific trait"
  Principal Investigator: Artyom Kopp

• THIRD PRIZE: Sarah Neuman, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
  Poster Title: "INO80-dependent regression of transcriptional responses regulates developmental timing in Drosophila"
  Principal Investigator: Arash Bashirullah

Undergraduate Winners

• FIRST PRIZE: Kurtresha Worden, University of Nevada, Reno, USA
  Poster Title: "Localization of aversive gustatory memory"
  Principal Investigator: Alex C. Keene and Pavel Masek

• SECOND PRIZE: Dallas Criscoe, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA
  Poster Title: "Pathogen pressures increase the rate of meiotic recombination in Drosophila"
  Principal Investigator: Nadia Singh

• THIRD PRIZE: Robert J. Yamulla, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA, USA
  Poster Title: "Testing the models: Direct binding of β-catenin to the 20 amino acid repeats of APC is dispensible for Wnt regulation"
  Principal Investigator: David M. Roberts

Each awardee will receive a cash prize, a complimentary extension to their GSA membership, and a copy of Conversations in Genetics, a series of interviews with leading geneticists. The Society typically awards such prizes several times a year at each of their conferences on genetic research focused on a variety of model organisms.