Colin O’Banion, a Ph.D. student in the lab of David Lawrence, Ph.D., at the UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, was awarded the best poster award in the area of cell signaling, kinase and chemotherapy by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
O’Banion’s poster was selected by the Program Planning Committee at the recent ASBMB meeting in San Diego, California. His presentation, “An Optogenetic Toolkit for Spatial and Temporal Control of the cAMP Dependent Protein Kinase,” was also selected for an ASBMB oral presentation.
Originally from Rochester, New York, O’Banion studied neuroscience at the University of Rochester. He then worked at Johns Hopkins University for two years in the lab of Nicholas Maragakis, M.D., investigating the roles of astroglia in ALS disease progression using glial stem cells as a model. As a Ph.D. student at UNC in the School’s Division of Chemical Biology and Medicinal Chemistry, his thesis work focuses on developing optogenetic tools to control the cAMP/protein kinase A pathway in space and time. He has been awarded a UNC dissertation predoctoral fellowship.
“It was nice to get a bit of recognition for the hard work that my colleagues and I put into the projects that I presented,” O’Banion said. “However, the best part about getting the award and presenting the poster at ASBMB was that I was able to communicate our work to our target audience.”