News and Events

CHINJ held its 6th Annual Scientific Retreat on September 25, 2024 at the Cook Student Center. Over 65 faculty, trainee, staff, and Board Members attended and enjoyed a wonderful day of science and collegiality.  The exciting keynote lecture by Dr. Daniel Notterman of Princeton University Dept. of Molecular Biology described recent studies examining the roles of genetics, environment and social determinants of health and health care disparities on the initiation and development of atherosclerotic heart disease in adolescents and young adults in the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing study.  The program also included talks by graduate students and postdocs as well as 25 posters presented by trainees at different levels. Overall, it was a terrific day.  We look forward to next years' retreat.

On May 12th-17th, 2024, the Fragile X Autism Disorders Gordon Research Conference was held in Tuscany, Italy. Rutgers doctoral student Abihail Heller, who is completing her dissertation in Dr. Chiara Manzini’s lab here at The Child Health Institute of New Jersey, was able to share and explain her work ‘Characterizing the Impact of Developmental Cc2d1a Reduction as a Novel Mouse Model of ASD/ID’ through a poster presentation at the conference!  Click Here to read full article on LinkedIn

A team of Rutgers undergraduates has shown that an experimental drug known as Yoda1 may help drain cranial waste plus neurotoxins that cause Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia.

Andrew Boreland, a current biomedical Ph.D. student, is a shining example of the excellence that exists in our RBHS graduate programs. Andrew has taken full advantage of the opportunities that Rutgers School of Graduate Studies–Biomedical Health Sciences has to offer and has succeeded at the highest level.

CHI held its 5th Annual Scientific Retreat on September 19, 2023.  The event was a fantastic success and attended by over 70 CHINJ scientists, trainees and staff. The program included 8 presentations by CHI's research trainees; a talk by Dr. Kristine Schmitz, a young faculty member from our joint program in population science and prevention with Dr. Keinman, and Keynote Speaker Dr. Richard O'Reilly from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who presented a talk on "Transplantation and the Emergence of T-Cell Therapies."

Andrew Boreland, a graduate student in the laboratory of Dr. Zhiping Pang, has been awarded the Aaron Shatkin Award for Outstanding Graduate Student.  The Shatkin Awards are given annually to Ph.D. students in the biomedical sciences for excellent academic and research achievement. The scholarship is named after Aaron Shatkin, who was the founding director of the Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine. 

Congratulations to Andrew!

Dr. Mark Rossi was awarded a NIH R01 grant titled, "Lateral hypothalamic circuit dysfunction underlying the development of diet-induced obesity" and a 2023 Busch Biomedical Grant titled, "A pontine-hypothalamic pathway for acquiring aversive behavioral states."  Dr. Lisa Denzin was awarded a 2023 Busch Biomedical Grant titled,  "An unexpected role for bone morphogenic protein 2 (BMPR2) in the MHC class II antigen processing and presentation pathway."

Congratulations to Drs. Rossi and Denzin!

CHINJ was thrilled to participate in, and support the annual Hudson Shea Foundation Angel Walk held on Saturday, September 9, 2023. The Hudson Shea Foundation supports families affected by late pregnancy or early infancy loss, and provides funding for research at CHINJ and the Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, through the Hudson Shea-Stella Faith Research Fund, to prevent these tragic events. CHI is extremely grateful to Canaan, Adam Yoskowitz, Trudie Heerema, and all of the great supporters of the Hudson Shea Foundation, for this wonderful partnership and the tremendous work of the Foundation.

The Rutgers Board of Governors announced the promotion of Dr. Zhiping Pang to Full Professor at its June, 2023 meeting. Dr. Pang is a founding member of the CHINJ, having joined us from Stanford in the Fall of 2011. He is recognized worldwide for his cutting-edge research on altered neuronal synapse function in a range of neuropsychiatric diseases including neuropsychiatric disorders, autism and neurodevelopmental disorders, satiety and feeding and addictions. His research leadership was also recently recognized by NIH with the award of an RM1 grant together with Dr. Jennifer Mulle (Rutgers-CABM) and Dr. Jubao Duan (Northshore University Health) to use stem cell technologies to study genes that cause neuropsychiatric disorders.   

Congratulations to Dr. Pang on this well-deserved promotion!!!