Student in Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan's Lab Awarded NIH F30 Fellowship

By Jyoti Athanikar | June 21 2017

Ron Siebenaler, a Medical Scientist Training Program (MSTP) student in Dr. Arul Chinnaiyan’s lab at the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, was awarded the highly competitive NIH F30 fellowship for work titled, Characterization of growth factor control of Argonaute 2 and RAS interaction. The purpose of this F30 award (Kirschstein-NRSA, dual-doctoral degree, predoctoral fellowship) is to enhance the integrated research and clinical training of promising predoctoral students, who are matriculating in a combined MD/PhD or other dual-doctoral degree training program (e.g. DO/PhD, DDS/PhD, AuD/PhD, DVM/PhD), and who intend careers as physician/clinician-scientists.

Ron attended Ohio State University as an undergraduate student, where he had an opportunity to partcipate in a ten-week international research fellowship at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune, India following his junior year. He was also engaged in research in the lab of Dr. Michael Caligiuri at OSU studying the molecular basis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and the development of novel therapeutics. During his studies at OSU, he was awarded multiple fellowships to fund his summer research and school expenses including the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, two Pelotonia Undergraduate Research Fellowships, and the American Society of Hematology Trainee Research Award. After graduating from The Ohio State University, Ron enrolled in the University of Michigan MSTP program in 2013 to pursue a combined MD/PhD degree to extend upon his previous research experiences. He joined Dr. Chinnaiyan’s lab in 2015. His thesis project is to study growth factor regulation of AGO2-RAS interaction in both normal physiology and cancer biology where he is pioneering a new technique called iCLIP-seq.