The 2025 Yip Award winners' projects: from engineering Bioink to investigating the ribonucleosome
Eight students at the Donnelly Centre have been awarded the Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Award, supporting their work in biomolecular research. The $3,000 prize is awarded to doctoral-stream students engaging in innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.
The award is named after the late Dr. Cecil Yip, a trailblazer in diabetes research who was named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002 for his lifetime of scientific contributions. During his career, Yip’s research expanded our understanding of how insulin functions on a molecular level.
Following his retirement as Vice-Dean of Research in the Faculty of Medicine, Yip was key to the creation and development of the Donnelly. As a founding co-Director, he shaped the centre to be the place it is today.
“Congratulations to this year’s Yip Award winners,” says Stephane Angers, professor and current Director of the Donnelly Centre. “It is always exciting to see the next generation of researchers tackling important questions in the biomedical sciences.”
Winners of the 2025 Yip Awards
Shumaim Barooj of the Shoichet Lab: “Engineering a Hyaluronan-based Bioink for the 3D printing of vascularized tissue.”
Lucia Chen of the Roy Lab: “A systematic investigation of agrochemical drug toxification by human P450s.”
Jennifer Li Hui Jiang of the Gillis Lab: “Single-cell RNA-sequencing approaches to characterizing population-scale regulatory dynamics of X chromosome inactivation and X-linked genetic diseases.”
Mohammadjavad Kahlani of the Morris Lab: “Using single-cell CRISPR perturbation to probe GWAS-identified coding and noncoding variants to function in osteoarthritis.”
Mike Kazemi of the Morris Lab: “Deciphering how non-coding genetic variation influences platelet formation and function in human blood.”
Yolanda Liu of the Blencowe Lab: “Investigating the role of the 40S “ribonucleosome” in RNA biogenesis and neurodevelopment.”
Kelly McKenna of the Taipale Lab: “Using induced proximity to rescue loss-of-function mutations in Parkin.”
Kaiden Thompson of the Taipale Lab: “Characterizing novel proximity-dependent modulators of the transcriptional activator BRD4 for transcriptional rewiring in human cancer.”
