Category: Awards

Congratulations to Alan K. Mai on being recognized with the 2025 Carol and James McGaugh Award for his strong moral character, integrity, and potential for making a difference in neuroscience!

Joia Capocchi was awarded the James Tait Goodrich Award for excellence in Neurobiology at the 2024 CNLM Awards Ceremony. Joia was also awarded the Barry Goldwater Scholarship at the 2024 Provost luncheon. Congratulations on your outstanding achievements!

Congratulations Lauren Le and Jasmine Nguyen on their First Place poster award at the UCI Undergraduate Research Symposium 2024 presenting the interdisciplinary UROP project, “Engineering iPSC-derived Microglia for CNS-Wide Delivery of Disease Modifying Proteins in Alzheimer’s Disease Mice.”

Well done to all MBJ lab participants.

Grants are awarded to students whose research, teaching, and/or service supports diversity, equity, and inclusion and contributes to UCI’s effort to open opportunities for under-represented groups in higher education.

Amanda McQuade receives the 2021 James L. McGaugh Award for her publication studying TREM2 in human iPS-Microglia: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19227-5.

Congratulations to Angeline Duke and Morgan Coburn for winning the 2021 Most Promising Future Faculty Award! The Most Promising Future Faculty Award recognizes graduate students who show great promise through their effectiveness as instructors or teaching assistants.

Morgan Coburn is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior. Her teaching experience is off the charts, having served in ten different teaching capacities. Her research focuses on the action of microglia, the innate immune cell of the brain, and their role in Alzheimer’s disease. Morgan hopes to find a cure for one of society’s most heartbreaking diseases and she wants to give back and teach full time one day.

Congratulation once again to Morgan Coburn for winning the 2021 Most Promising Future Faculty Award!

This prize is awarded in honor of Dr. Carl W. Cotman’s legacy in scientific accomplishments throughout his Directorship of the Institute for Memory Impairments and Neurological Disorders and the development of the health sciences at UCI.  Dr. Cotman’s passion and longstanding interest in the brain have fostered research within the Institute and on the UCI campus throughout the years.  The recipient of this award is selected from those who have excelled in their studies on memory impairments and neurological disorders and have helped to advance the mission of the Institute.  You should be proud of your accomplishments and for having received this award.

Congratulations to Amanda McQuade for winning a Junior Faculty Award for the 15th International Conference on Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. The Organizing Committee of AD/PD™ 2021 recognized the top junior and trainee abstract presenters with Junior Faculty Awards. Amanda was recognized for her talk “INTERACTIONS BETWEEN ALZHEIMER’S RISK FACTORS TREM2 AND MS4A6A IN HUMAN IPS-MICROGLIA”.

Pedagogical Fellows are a group of productive apprentice scholars who also have an interest in providing superlative instruction in their roles as Teaching Assistants.

Fellows are selected through a competitive process based on teaching evaluations, letters of recommendation, and demonstrated interest in pedagogy. They commit to additional coursework and training in order to learn more about pedagogy in higher education, educational trends, and how to better prepare for the academic job market. They also provide an important service to the academic community by designing and implementing discipline-specific training for new TAs in their departments and Schools.

With their skills, experience, and increased self-confidence, the Pedagogical Fellows have been successful in securing professorial and professional positions in which they are interested.

Congratulations Morgan Coburn!