biochemistry – UofL News Fri, 17 Apr 2026 17:45:05 +0000 en-US hourly 1 UofL senior wins inaugural international STEM fellowship /post/uofltoday/uofl-senior-wins-inaugural-international-stem-fellowship/ Fri, 09 Dec 2022 21:35:53 +0000 /?p=57777 Afi Tagnedji, a University of Louisville senior majoring in biochemistry, is among an elite group of international science, technology, engineering and mathematics students awarded the firstĚý.
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The fellowship, which focuses on building a network of the next generation of scientists and technologists, today announced its first cohort of 100 students from the United States, Japan, Australia and India. She is one of 25 who won in the U.S. and the only fellow from a Kentucky university.
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An initiative of the four countries, the fellowship is aimed at creating an international network of science and technology experts who will work together within and among their countries for the greater good.Ěý, a philanthropic arm of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and his wife, Wendy, administers the fellowship.
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The award is the latest in a series of prestigious academic scholarships and fellowships for Tagnedji, a native of Togo in west Africa. Already a recipient of UofL’s selective Martin Luther King and Woodford Porter scholarships for undergraduates, she won a Barry Goldwater Scholarship for college juniors this spring.
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The award will be used to support her pursuit of graduate studies in genetics and pharmacology.Ěý
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“I have long been interested in pharmacogenetics, a field of research that studies how a person’s genes affect how they respond to medications, and hope to mitigate cancer health disparities with precision medicine and diagnostics,” she said. “I thank my friends, family and mentors for their continued support.”
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The undergraduate researcher is a student leader who has been active in UofL’s Student Government Association.
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Each Quad Fellow will receive a one-time award ofĚý $50,000 to use for tuition, research, fees, books, room and board, and related academic expenses. The fellowships also include exclusive programming opportunities and fellows are eligible for another $25,000 based on need.
]]> Internationally renowned genomicist to give public talk on application of big data to human health /section/science-and-tech/internationally-renowned-genomicist-to-give-public-talk-on-application-of-big-data-to-human-health/ Tue, 19 Mar 2019 17:47:17 +0000 http://www.uoflnews.com/?p=46170 Michael Snyder, a pioneer in the use of big data in biomedical research, will give a free public lecture at the University of Louisville Health Sciences Center on Monday, March 25.

Snyder’s talk, “Big Data and Health,” will take place at noon in room 101-102 at the Kosair Charities Clinical & Translational Research Building, 505 S. Hancock St. Snyder will focus on how information in large databases, or big data, can be used to develop improved and more individualized approaches to predicting, diagnosing and treating common diseases.Ěý

, PhD, is an international leader in the fields of functional genomics and proteomics and is the director of the Center of Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, where he is the Stanford W. Ascherman Professor and Chair of Genetics.

He wrote “Genomics & Personalized Medicine: What Everyone Needs to Know,” a book that explores the prospects and realities of genomics and personalized medicine for consumers. He was a key participant in the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) project, which identified functional elements in the human genome.

Snyder’s research group was the first to perform a large-scale functional genomics project in any organism. Genomics is a branch of molecular biology that focuses on the structure, function, evolution and mapping of genomes in an organism’s complete set of DNA.

Ěýhas made several groundbreaking findings, including the discovery that much more of the human genome is either transcribed or contains regulatory elements than previously known, and that a high diversity of binding of transcription factors – gene products that participate in regulating what genes are active – occurs between and within species.

Snyder also has combined different advanced “omics” technologies to perform the first longitudinal Integrative Personal Omics Profile (iPOP) of an individual and used the information to assess disease risk and monitor disease states for personalized medicine. He co-founded several biotechnology companies, including Protometrix (now part of Life Technologies), Affomix (now part of Illumina), Excelix, Personalis and Q Bio.

Snyder received his PhD at the California Institute of Technology and postdoctoral training at Stanford University.

The lecture is sponsored by theĚýĚýat the UofL School of Medicine. For more information, contact Janice Ellwanger at 502-852-5217 or David Samuelson at 502-852-7797.

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