University of Minnesota MSTP (MD/PhD)

05/27/2026

Our MD-PhD Information and Q&A Session is Tuesday, June 23 at 7:00 PM CDT on Zoom. Meet with the MSTP Director and current students. Register at http://z.umn.edu/mstpinfo

05/18/2026

Congratulations to Kate Fallon, who successfully defended her PhD. The title of Kate's thesis is "Redox perturbations in muscular dystrophy: mechanistic insights into eccentric contraction–induced force loss".

05/07/2026

Congratulations to Allison Dona, who successfully defended her PhD. The title of Allison's thesis is "Stigmatizing and affirming language in cancer care electronic health records".

04/27/2026

Check out the co-author paper by Jovany Betancourt in Journal of Experimental Medicine titled "Alternatively activated monocyte-derived myeloid cells promote extracellular pathogen persistence in pulmonary fungal granulomas".

04/20/2026

Check out the first author paper by Kate Dembny in Journal of Neural Engineering titled "Metric validation for detection of delayed and directed coupling".

The brain functions as a complex network of billions of interconnected neurons, coordinating processes from basic reflexes to high-level cognition. Dysfunction in these networks contribute to neurological and psychiatric disorders, including epilepsy, depression, and Parkinson's disease. Understandi...

04/14/2026

Check out the co-author paper by Hannah Bergom in Oncotarget titled "CREB5 regulates stem cell-like transcriptional programs to enhance tumor progression in prostate cancer".

Copyright: © 2026 Makovec et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Prostate g …

04/13/2026

Congratulations to Anisha Adke, who successfully defended her PhD. The title of Anisha's thesis is "VGF in the nucleus accumbens: roles in synaptic and opioid-evoked plasticity"

04/07/2026

Congratulations to John Roy Lozada, who successfully defended his PhD. The title of John's thesis is "Tuning the aperture: a focus on NK cell diversity and dynamics in cancer"

03/30/2026

Check out the co-author paper by Dominique Earland in America Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene titled "The effect of head of household occupation and activity at sunrise and sunset on malaria prevalence in Sussundenga, Mozambique".

There is evidence that outdoor occupations and being active outdoors at night increase the risk of malaria infection. This study aimed to examine the associations between both head of household occupation and whether an individual was active at sunrise and/or sunset on the outcome of malaria infecti...

03/20/2026

Congratulations to our students who matched today! We are so proud of you and look forward to all that you will accomplish in the future.

Taylor Brown, PhD
Mount Sinai - Pathology (AP/NP)

Rebecca Butler, PhD
Northwestern University - General Surgery

Jenna Dick, PhD
Yale University - Dermatology (Research)

Adrina Kocharian, PhD
Stanford University – Neurology

Elizabeth Okafor, PhD
Boston Children's Hospital - Pediatrics

Michael Patterson, PhD
University of North Carolina - Internal Medicine

Riley Shearer, PhD
University of Washington - Internal Medicine (PSTP)

03/02/2026

Check out the first author paper by John Lozada in Cancer Immunology Research titled "Integrated single-cell profiling reveals dichotomous NK cell populations associated with immunosuppression in solid tumors".

Natural killer (NK) cells represent key effectors of antitumor immunity, yet emerging evidence highlights populations with distinct roles in cancer. Despite such expanded diversity within the NK cell repertoire, we lack an understanding of how this heterogeneity impacts immune responses and downstre...