2023 Suddath Award Winners Announced

Join us in congratulating the 2023 Suddath Award Winners!

The  F.L. "Bud" Suddath and Frances "Lee" Gafford Suddath Fellowship Award was established by Bud Suddath's family, friends, and colleagues in memory of his contributions to Georgia Tech. The award is given annually to graduate students at Georgia Tech who have demonstrated significant bio-research accomplishments while conducting biological or biochemical research at the molecular or cellular level.

First Place Award

Minh Thu “Alice” Ma, Ph.D. candidate in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry – Raquel Lieberman, Advisor - "Development of Recombinant Antibodies for Detecting Multiple Conformational States of Glaucoma-associated Myocilin.” 

• Alice’s Ph.D. research involves developing new antibodies targeting the protein myocilin as novel diagnostic and therapeutic tools for glaucoma. Her project’s long-term goal includes an anti-aggregation therapeutic antibody to treat myocilin-associated glaucoma and she has provided proof of concept for a totally new therapeutic strategy to ameliorate misfolded proteins. Alice has been the primary driver of this collaborative project and is the lead author of the manuscript. Additionally, Alice is a co-inventor on the patent her lab submitted (with promising commercial and translational applications), and licensing is in progress.

Alice will present her work on the opening day of the 2023 Suddath Symposium, March 15, 2023.

Second Place Award

Brian Huang, Ph.D. candidate in the School of School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - Corey Wilson, Advisor – “A Synthetic Biology Platform for Engineering Living Therapeutics.”

• Brian’s Ph.D. research involves developing regulatory tools for control of gene expression in human gut symbionts of the Bacteroides genus. Based on his contributions and work conducted with his lab, Brian has earned co-authorship and contributing author credits on published articles. His advisor highlighted his dedicated work on a consortium-based study with findings that represent a paradigm shift in technologies related to gut microbiota development and the transcriptional programming framework that may serve as a foundation for next-generation living therapeutics, in addition to providing a powerful technology to advance the general study of the Bacteroides genus.

Third Place Award

Oluwamayokun “Mo” Oshinowo – Ph.D. candidate in the School of Biomedical Engineering and an M.D. candidate at Emory University and Georgia Tech - Wilbur Lam and David Myers, Co-Advisors – “Single Platelet Biomechanics for Translational and Clinical Investigation.”

• Mo is an M.D./Ph.D. candidate whose thesis work stemmed from trying to better understand Immune Thrombocytopenia (ITP), a bleeding disorder so confusing and ill-defined that a test for the disorder itself does not yet exist. Mo’s work in this area is the first that confirms that cellular force is important in the context of physiological disorders by showing a direct link between cell force and a pathology. This work paves the way for a diagnostic capable of letting patients know when they are at risk for bleeding. Mo then looked for why platelets from these patients had low forces and found that where the antibody binds not what it binds to is key. His advisors believe that Mo’s work will be credited as the keystone that leads to a path to diagnose, manage, and eventually cure immune thrombocytopenia.