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Researcher Stories

Get to know the PhRMA Foundation’s award recipients.

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From Childhood Experiments to Preventing Deadly Heart Rhythms

Hilda Jafarah, a third-year PhD student at the University of Pennsylvania, is exploring how to prevent life-threatening irregular heartbeats that can occur in the days following a heart attack.

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Using AI to Streamline Development of New Antibacterial Drugs

Damilola Olukorede, a PhD student at the University of Michigan, aims to improve the process for making new antibacterial drugs derived from natural sources like plants.

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Eavesdropping on the Brain to Map the Biology of Addiction

Dr. Dakota Brockway, a postdoctoral trainee at the University of Pittsburgh, aims to map brain circuits to understand how alcohol hijacks them to design better treatments.

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Tailoring Nanoparticles for Better Cancer Treatment

Kenneth Hulugalla, a PhD candidate at the University of Mississippi, is studying how proteins in a patient’s blood interact with nanoparticle drug carriers and influence whether therapies reach cancer tumors.

Awardee Spotlight

Alice Wang

  • Stony Brook University

“This fellowship will support my work on discovering novel therapies for patients with cancer cachexia and my career aspiration as a physician-scientist.”

Combining Strategies to Stop Cancer Growth

Masuda Akther, a PhD candidate at Rutgers University, is developing a combination therapy designed to target two vulnerabilities of cancer cells.