The 2026 Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Awards fund nine early researchers at the Donnelly Centre

The Donnelly Centre announces nine skilled graduate researchers as the awardees of the 2026 Cecil Yip Doctoral Research Awards. 

Funding each student with $3,000, the awards an annual tribute to the legacy of trailblazer Cecil Yip, the former vice-dean of research in the Faculty of Medicine and co-founder of the Donnelly Centre. As a reflection of Yip’s ideologies towards collaboration in research, the awards fund innovative work that crosses disciplinary boundaries.

“Congratulations to the awardees, who each exemplify the interdisciplinary and collaborative culture of the Donnelly Centre,” says Christopher Yip, Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, Principal Investigator at the Donnelly, and Chair of the award committee. “Every year, the Yip Awards support cutting-edge biomedical projects that allow talented early researchers to hone their skills as scientists and innovators." 

The Donnelly Centre proudly announces the following graduate students as the awardees of this year’s Yip Awards: 

Sophia Alonzi (supervised by Rafa Montenegro Burke): Developing accessible methods to determine the position of carbon-carbon double bonds within unsaturated lipids via liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry 

Mahnoor Chauhan (supervised by Liliana Attisano): Investigating Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis using vascularized immunocompetent cerebral organoids 

Jade Juba (supervised by Khalid Al-Zahrani): Optimizing and developing high-throughput functional genomics screening approaches to model extrachromosomal DNA-mediated gene amplification in cancer and uncover novel oncogenes 

Marcia Jude (supervised by Gary Bader): Mapping genetic modifiers of complex traits in population-scale biobanks 

Eleanore Lin (supervised by Ben Blencowe and Khalid Al-Zahrani): Development of improved dCasRx-tethered splicing modulators and application in exon-resolution functional genomics in vivo 

Adele Lopes (supervised by Khalid Al-Zahrani): Establishing a novel high-throughput in vivo functional genomics model to interrogate genetic changes in ovarian cancer patients 

Laura (Siyue) Ren (supervised by Peter Roy): Developing a yeast-based functional assay to profile human CYP450 variant activity 

Kevin Yuan (supervised by Mikko Taipale): Leveraging the pathogen effector ORFeome to discover novel cancer vulnerabilities 

Emine Dide Yurtal (supervised by Milica Radisic): Optimizing mitochondrial transplantation therapy for cardiac tissue repair after myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury.