Apr 15, 2026
Four Huck Trainees Among Graduate Student Award Winners
Four Huck graduate students are among the 42 that have been recognized as outstanding scholars with Graduate Student Awards by the Office of the President and the Fox Graduate School.
Robert Witkowski, Megan von Abo, Chad Brunswick, and Ioannis Mouratidis will be honored at a special luncheon on April 15.
"We at the Huck Institutes are so immensely proud of Chad, Ioannis, Megan, and Robert and their outstanding accomplishments as researchers, teachers, and communicators of science beyond the classroom,” said Professor of Anthropology David Puts, the Huck’s associate director for Graduate Education. “They are making important contributions to understanding the genetic, molecular and cellular factors underlying aging and memory, using machine learning to identify DNA sequences that can be used detect cancer and other diseases, communicating the scientific method and an enthusiasm for science to a broad audience, and a great deal more.”
“Their well-earned awards highlight the innovation, dedication, and impact that they bring to their fields, and offer rewarding validation of the Huck's commitment to leading-edge, interdisciplinary research and education for training the next generation of scientific leaders."
Robert Witkowski, a Plant Biology doctoral student co-advised by Tanya Renner and John Tooker, will be honored with the Intercollege Graduate Student Outreach Achievement Award. Witkowski has emerged as both a leading young scholar in plant‑insect interactions and a dynamic science communicator who is furthering Penn State’s land-grant mission. His dissertation explores the molecular dialogue between plants and parasitic gall‑inducing insects — projects that are supported by competitive funding, including a U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture Predoctoral Fellowship. Alongside his research productivity, demonstrated through award‑winning presentations, publications and invited talks, Witkowski has built an exceptional record of public engagement.
A dedicated educator, he has designed and led programs that make plant science accessible to audiences of all ages. His “Great Goldenrod Bug Hunt” at the Arboretum at Penn State introduces students in grades K-6 to community ecology through hands‑on exploration, while his “Botany 101” workshops for the Penn State Plant Institute teach foundational botanical skills to adult learners. Witkowski has also co-developed multi‑week ecology labs to teach high school students experimental design and the scientific method. Colleagues laud him as a talented communicator whose outreach advances plant literacy and the University's land-grant mission. He is also a student member of the Huck’s Plant Institute.
Megan von Abo, a student in the integrated undergraduate-graduate biotechnology program, is being recognized with a Professional Master’s Excellence Award for an exceptional research portfolio that bridges molecular biology, neuroscience and circadian science. Her culminating project investigates how variants of a specific “circadian clock gene,” known as "Per1," contribute differently to memory consolidation and rhythmic regulation. This question has significant implications for understanding cognitive decline and circadian disruption in aging and disease. By combining behavioral studies in animals with careful analysis of gene activity, she is producing some of the first evidence that these gene variants may play distinct roles in memory‑related brain circuits.
Faculty describe her as operating at the level of a third‑year doctoral student, leading independent experiments, mentoring peers and contributing to multiple manuscripts, including work published in Biology of Sex Differences. Beyond the lab, von Abo supports biotechnology teaching and holds leadership roles across campus.
Chad Brunswick, a Neuroscience doctoral candidate and Neuroscience Institute student member working in Janine Kwapis’s lab, is receiving a Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship for Penn State Alumni in the Fox Graduate School.
His research is helping to advance our fundamental understanding of how aging alters the brain’s ability to update existing memories. While remembering is often thought of solely as retrieving old information, the brain must constantly revise stored memories as new experiences occur. This process is crucial for learning, decision‑making and cognitive flexibility. His dissertation focuses on the neuronal representations that encode specific memories and how their reactivation is impaired in the aging brain. Using an integrative toolkit that includes genetic labeling, pharmacology and carefully designed behavioral interventions, Brunswick investigates the molecular and cellular mechanisms that underlie successful memory updating and how these mechanisms change in the old brain. His research has demonstrated that restoring coordinated activity within these memory‑encoding representations can rescue updating deficits in older animals, revealing a promising therapeutic avenue.
Faculty described him as among the most innovative and capable scientists they have ever trained, praising his clarity of thought, creativity and independence. With multiple publications, national presentations and competitive fellowships, including a National Institutes of Health F31 fellowship, Brunswick is already making a significant impact on the field of aging and memory.
Ioannis Mouratidis, a doctoral candidate in bioinformatics and genomics advised by Ilias Georgakopoulos-Soares, is also being recognized with a Penn State Alumni Association Scholarship for Penn State Alumni in the Fox Graduate School, for research that pushes the boundaries of computational biology, genomic data science and AI‑enabled diagnostics. His dissertation introduces two novel categories of short DNA sequences: quasi‑primes, which uniquely distinguish one species from all others, and neomers, cancer‑specific sequences absent in healthy individuals. By developing algorithms to identify quasi‑primes across 45,000 genomes, Mouratidis uncovered sequence patterns linked to human brain development and disease, work published in Genome Research and tied to a major R01‑level grant from the National Institutes of Health.
His cancer‑detection research demonstrates that neomer‑based machine‑learning models can identify cancer and its type from a simple blood draw, opening pathways to noninvasive early diagnostics supported by a provisional patent and multiple cancer foundations. Mouratidis has also created multiple influential open‑access software programs, including kmerDB, ZSeeker and MAFcounter, that are now used globally.
His current research builds upon these computational methods to address the safety and security challenges that arise as AI becomes increasingly powerful in biology. With over 35 publications, numerous invited talks, and major grants influenced by his research, Mouratidis stands out as an exceptional researcher helping to shape the future of AI and the life sciences.
The roughly 270 graduate students studying in Huck programs represent around two percent of the 13,000 total at Penn State, but the Huck is over-represented in the Graduate Student Recognition Awards, with nearly 10 percent of the honors.
The full list of winners, including students from other graduate programs who are active collaborators in Huck research units and the labs of Huck-affiliated and Huck-funded faculty, is available on Penn State News.