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Balyssa Bell completes her PhD

Balyssa B. Bell has completed her graduate work in the laboratory of Dr. Kamal Rahmouni and will graduate with her PhD in May 2018.  Her thesis title was "Hypothalamic Mechanisms Underlying the Cardiovascular and Metabolic Actions of Leptin."  Balyssa's dissertation work focused on the differential control of various facets of leptin action by distinct neuronal populations and molecular signaling mechanisms.  Members of her thesis committee were chair, Dr. Kamal Rahmouni, and Drs. Justin Grobe, Stefan Strack, Yuriy Usachev, and Huxing Cui from the Department of Pharmacology.  Her work was supported by the NIH T32 predoctoral training grant in Pharmacological Sciences and by an individual NRSA fellowship from NHLBI and was published as the cover article with editorial commentary in the Feb. 2018 issue of Molecular Metabolism.

Balyssa graduated from Grinnell College in 2012 with a B.A. in Biochemistry and concentration in Neuroscience and entered the Pharmacology program via the Biosciences program at the University of Iowa in the same year.  Throughout her graduate training, Balyssa was selected to present her research at many national meetings, including oral presentations at Experimental Biology and the American Heart Association Council on Hypertension, and has won numerous institutional and national awards for abstracts, posters, and oral presentations.  She will begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Shunguang Wei and Robert Felder in the University of Iowa Department of Internal Medicine  in May 2018.

CONGRATULATIONS to Dr. Bell!

Date: 
Friday, May 4, 2018