The Winner of the 25th Annual Samuel Eiduson Student Lecture Award

Supraja Varadarajan from the Laboratory of Dr. Samantha Butler will present the 25th Annual Samuel Eiduson Lecture entitled, “Redefining the Role of Netrin1 as an Axon Guidance Cue in the Developing Spinal Cord”.

This award recognizes an outstanding graduate student in the neurosciences who has done especially commendable work during dissertation research.

Supraja Varadarajan is a seventh year graduate student who recently defended her doctoral thesis in May. She received her bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology Engineering in India and a master’s degree in Biomedical Engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, NJ.

Before graduate school, Supraja spent some time as a research assistant at UC Irvine with Dr. Aileen Anderson working on spinal cord injury.

Supraja’s graduate work has shed new light on the role of netrin1 as an axon guidance cue in the developing spinal cord while also suggesting a new mode of axon guidance. Her studies identify, for the first time, the key role that neural progenitors have in this process, orchestrating the sequential transfer of netrin1 protein that ultimately sets up a substrate to shape axonal trajectories.