Rittenberg Meritorious Research Travel Awards

The Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology will award travel grants, worth $1000 each, to support students or postdoctoral fellows to attend national and international scientific meetings. Travel grants will be awarded on the basis of the scientific quality of the submitted abstracts.

Preference is given to fellows or students who have not received a travel grant in the past two years, and the selection committee will strive to award only one travel grant per laboratory.

To apply, email a single PDF file to Katie Jones, including the following:

  1. Cover letter indicating candidate name, name of the Principal Investigator (PI) of the corresponding MMI laboratory, conference name, dates, location, purpose and justification.
  2. Abstract
  3. Two-page CV in this format: biosketch

Deadlines: December 1 and June 1

Applications will be reviewed promptly and successful applicants will be notified within two weeks of receipt.

Administrative contact: Katie Jones

2019

Sam Hobbs
Sam Hobbs

Sam earned his B.S. in biochemistry from the University of Washington in Seattle and is currently a fourth year graduate student in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Sam plans to use these funds to attend the Keystone Symposia on Tissue Immunity in January 2020. This conference draws many of the biggest names in T cell immunology and would provide an excellent opportunity to present his thesis project to potential postdoctoral mentors.

Christopher Loo
Christopher Loo

Christopher earned his B.A. in molecular biology from UC Santa Cruz and earned his Ph.D. from OHSU’s Molecular Microbiology and Immunology graduate program. Chris plans to use these funds to attend the American Association of Immunologists conference in Hawaii in May 2020. This conference is an international and multidisciplinary conference to discuss current trends, theory and application in the wide field of computational biosciences. Receiving the travel award will enable Chris to receive peer review of his project, promote his research idea to a wide audience and allow him to gain insight and ideas to incorporate new methods of computational immunology into his research.

Zoe Lyski
Zoe Lyski

Zoe earned her B.S. and M.S. in biology from the University of North Florida. She is now a third year graduate student in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Zoe will use these funds to attend the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH) 68th Annual Meeting in November. The annual ASTMH meeting is the premier meeting for tropical medicine and global health scientists. This year will be her first year attending the meeting and she is excited to present her ongoing doctoral research. In addition to presenting a poster, she is looking forward to attending sessions on dengue pathogenesis and immunology, dengue vaccines and Zika, to name a few.

Jogender Singh
Jogender Singh

Jogender completed his undergraduate and graduate work in India and is a fourth year postdoc in the Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology. Jogender used these funds to attend the 22nd International C. elegans Conference in June 2019. This is an important meeting that covers broad areas of research on C. elegans. Several sessions covered host-pathogen interactions and organismal homeostasis—the research areas that are of paramount interest to him.