John Man Ma successfully passed his Ph.D. examination on Monday, November 25, 2013. His thesis title was "Genetic Determinants of Metabolic Syndrome in Lyon Hypertensive Rats". Members of his thesis committee were chair, Anne Kwitek from the Departments of Pharmacology, Internal Medicine, and Molecular Physiology & Biophysics; Terry Braun from the Departments of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences and Biomedical Engineering; Kamal Rahmouni, from the Departments of Pharmacology and Internal Medicine; Thomas Wassink from the Departments of Psychiatry and Pediatrics; and Kai Wang from the Department of Biostatistics.

Dr. Ma's research focused on integrating genetics, genomics, and systems biology approaches to identify genetic elements that may cause the metabolic syndrome (MetS) in the LH rat, a genetic model of MetS. He received his B.S. in Biochemistry and M.S. in Bioengineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and began in the in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics at Iowa in 2007.

Congratulations to Dr. Ma!