The Graduate Division extends hearty congratulations to two current UCSF postdocs and a PhD alum who are among this year's recipients of Hanna H. Gray Fellowships from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).
The individuals below join a total of 25 exceptional early career scientists who were named the most recent Hanna Gray Fellows. HHMI's Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program is a transformational award for early career researchers who show exceptional promise of becoming outstanding leaders in academic science, making foundational discoveries while building an inclusive scientific culture. Fellows receive funding for their postdoctoral training and during their early years as independent faculty. Through their successful careers, Hanna Gray Fellows move science forward and will recruit, mentor, and inspire the next generation of scientists from all backgrounds. Learn more about the Hanna Gray Fellowship.
Alejandro López-Cruz, MD, PhD
Dr. López is a UCSF postdoc working with mentor Zachary Knight, PhD. He earned an MD from Weill Cornell Medicine, and a PhD from The Rockefeller University. Dr. López is using systems neuroscience approaches to study how nutritional and aversive signals from the gut and the rest of the body are detected in the brainstem to regulate feeding, gut motility, and nausea.
José A. Velilla, PhD
Dr. Maza is a UCSF postdoc working with mentors Aashish Manglik, MD, PhD, and Mark Von Zastrow, MD, PhD. A doctoral graduate of Harvard University, Dr. Velilla is leveraging advances in the fields of electron microscopy and mass spectrometry to bridge the atomic and cellular scales in understanding G protein-coupled receptor signaling from unconventional cell locations. G protein-coupled receptors are critical to a variety of physiological processes, including sight, taste, blood pressure regulation, and glucose metabolism.
Camillia Azimi, PhD ’22
Dr. Azimi is a 2022 graduate of UCSF’s Biomedical Sciences PhD program. She is a postdoctoral fellow at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, working with mentors Miriam Merad, MD, PhD, and Brian D. Brown, PhD. Azimi's research focuses on engineering novel chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) to reprogram macrophages at the disease site for targeted control of the disease. This work seeks to expand our understanding of macrophage signaling and to modulate macrophage behavior with an aim to develop new approaches in innate immunotherapy.
Previously-appointed Hanna Gray Fellows currently pursuing research at UCSF include Biafra Ahanonu, PhD, Willow Coyote-Maestas, PhD, Christina Homer, MD, PhD, Johnathan Maza, PhD, Jeannette Tenthorey, PhD, and Wendy Yue, PhD.
Applications for the 2025 Hanna H. Gray Fellowship are being accepted through Feb. 26, 2025.