The Annual James L. O’Leary Prize Competition is held each year in conjunction with the O’Leary Lecture. 

Join us live in person for the 2022 O’Leary Prize Competition!

“Designed to acknowledge the most original and important accomplishments in Neuroscience research at WashU by a predoctoral or postdoctoral fellow”

Congratulations to the 2022 Finalists!

• • Simone Brioschi, PhD, postdoc – Colonna lab: “Heterogeneity of meningeal B cells reveals a lymphopoietic niche at the CNS border”
  • Lucia Capano, graduate student – Yoo lab: “Recapitulation of endogenous 4R tau expression and formation of insoluble tau in directly reprogrammed human neurons”
  • Jiayang Chen, graduate student – Dougherty lab: “Delineating the in vivo function of the MYT1L neurodevelopmental disorder gene”
  • Xiaoying Chen, PhD, postdoc – Holtzman lab: “Microglia-mediated T cell Infiltration Drives Neurodegeneration in Tauopathy”
  • Rui Feng, PhD, postdoc – Cavalli lab: “Self-renewing macrophages and microglia populate dorsal root ganglia after nerve injury and contribute to promote axon regeneration”
  • Nicole Leitner, PhD, postdoc – Ben-Shahar lab: “Interactions between neuronal sex determination and Hox gene specification drive the segmental specialization of neural circuits along the anterior-posterior brain axis in Drosophila”
  • Daniel Murphy, PhD, staff scientist* – Corbo lab: “Genetic reprogramming via acute Nr2e3knockout prevents photoreceptor degeneration”     *work performed as postdoc
  • Patrick Sheehan, graduate student – Musiek lab: “Bi-directional relationship between astrocyte circadian clocks and Alzheimer’s Disease pathology”
  • Leo Volkov, graduate student – Corbo lab: “Defining a hierarchical cascade of transcriptional factors controlling photoreceptor fate”
  • Jiang Zhu, graduate student – Weihl lab: “VCP suppresses proteopathic seeding in neurons”

Each Finalist will deliver a 10-minute presentation, and our judging panel will choose a winner to receive a $1000 prize.

Please join us for an afternoon of exciting science and competition, and to support Neuroscience at WashU!

Learn more about the competition and see the list of past winners.

Note that each year, a past O’Leary Prize recipient is invited to be a guest judge and present the O’Leary Lecture.  This year’s guest judge is Jeff Mumm, PhD (Johns Hopkins University) who will deliver the O’Leary Lecture on Wednesday March 16.

For inquiries contact the ONR.