Awards
IADR STAR Network Fellowship
The purpose of this fellowship will be to support the awardee's attendance to the IADR General Session & Exhibition, and then to have a research experience in a renowned research laboratory immediately before or after the IADR General Session.
Award Prize/Recognition
- $5,000 for travel and accommodations
- Pre-Paid Meeting registration
Key Dates
Applications Open:
Jul 14, 2025
Applications Closed:
Nov 24, 2025
Eligibility
- Must be an IADR member.
- Must be a current Ph.D. student OR within five years post- Ph.D.
The purposes of the visit are to:
- Network with colleagues in in the area of the candidate´s own research.
- Develop an understanding of contemporary research environments.
- Learn new and innovative research techniques that can advance the science undertaken by Fellow on their return to their home.
- Develop shared research protocols and possible funding applications.
2026 Recipients
Claire Houchen
University of Missouri-Kansas City
Placed at Freire’s Lab at J Craig Venter Institute, La Jolla
- Mentor/Faculty Advisor: Dr. Marcelo Freire https://www.jcvi.org/about/marcelo-freire
- Research Description: Spatial transcriptomics of oral and systemic tissue. Dr. Freire has extensive experience in host response, inflammation biology, transcriptomics and antibody engineering. Inflammation is a fundamental physiological process of normal and pathological conditions. He has led studies that developed novel therapeutics in control of chronic diseases. At JCVI, Dr. Freire is working on investigating links tissue pathology and overall immune response. In particular his lab is studying mechanisms controlling innate recognition, phagocytosis and activation signals of adaptive immune responses.
Xin Li
University of North Carolina
Placed at Gutkind Lab, American Cancer Society (ACS) Research Professor, Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine, Moores Cancer Center
- Mentor/Faculty Advisor: J. Silvio Gutkind, Ph.D.
- Research Description: Our interest is in exploiting the emerging information on dysregulated signaling circuitries and individual genomic and molecular alterations to develop new precision-targeted and immune therapies to prevent and treat oral cancer. Our main areas of research are on 1) evaluating the chemopreventive potential of metformin in oral premalignancy; 2) targeting the EGFR-HER3/PI3K/mTOR network for oral cancer treatment; 3) the development of novel immunotherapy strategies to enhance the response to immune checkpoint blockade (ICB); and 4) targeting the novel Hippo-YAP/TEAD oncogenic signaling and immune escape driver for oral cancer treatment.
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