Research Awards
Generous donations from organizations and the community have allowed CRINA to give out many awards and grants to help support the next generation of cancer research.
Supporting Students
CRINA is dedicated to supporting students and their research. We have set up dozens of studentships over the years to offer support at all levels, from undergraduate students to doctoral students, and have also partnered with several organizations such as the Alberta Cancer Foundation, Kids with Cancer Society, and Roses of Hope Foundation.
This scholarship, in memory of Dr. Rachel Mandel, is given to a graduate student pursuing an innovative research project that strives to generate new ideas about the diagnosis, treatment and/or prevention of lymphoma and other blood cancers.
Recipients:
2024: Angela Hamie & Sara Elmahrouk
2023: Mohammad Nasrullah
2022: Justine Lai
2021: Mahmoud Elghiaty and Andrew Locke
2020: Nicholas Ruel
The Elaine Essien Graduate Award in Ovarian Cancer Research will be awarded to a graduate student conducting ovarian cancer research.
Recipients:
2024: Zorica Nakevska
2023: Brennan Salte
CRINA partners with the Alberta Cancer Foundation to provide a scholarship to an outstanding graduate student conducting cancer research.
Recipients:
2022: Justin Knechtel
2019: Marnie Newell
2017: Amanda Swan
This award was established to recognize a high caliber graduate student conducting cancer research at the University of Alberta. CRINA partners with the Alberta Cancer Foundation to offer this award.
Recipient:
2022: Mona Al-Onazi
2018: Amirali Bukhari
These awards were made possible through generous donations to CRINA.
2024: Leila Pirayeshfard & Xiyuan Wu
2023: Leila Pirayeshfard, Shayla Mosley, Jaqueline de Lima Munhoz, Serena Li
2022: Nicholas Ruel, Jaqueline de Lima Munhoz
This award was made possible through the Kenneth and Reta Cote and Joyce Cote Biomedical Research Endowment.
2024: Rachel Sherrington
2023: Maria Areli Lorenzana Carrillo
Darin McDonald believed that it is the team working collaboratively where the greatest results are achieved. With this in mind, his family and friends, in collaboration with CRINA, created the Darin McDonald Team Award in Basic Oncology Research endowment in his memory, to provide an annual award to a multidisciplinary team that demonstrates excellence and collaboration in basic oncology research.
Recipients
2024: The team of Kléouforo-Paul Dembele, Alois Haromy, Jiyuan Piao, Evangelos D. Michelakis, and Gopinath Sutendra for the CRINA Research Day poster presentation titled "Nanotubes mediated mitochondria transfer from normal to cancer cells promotes Mesenchymal-to-Epithelial Transition (MET) required for metastasis in cancer."
2023: The team of Saymon Tejay, Maria Areli Lorenzana Carillo, Joseph Nana, Yongsheng Liu, Yongneng Zhang, Alois Haromy, Yuan Zhao, Edith Pituskin, John Ussher, Evangelos Michelakis, and Gopinath Sutendra for the CRINA Research Day poster presentation "Tumor-Secreted Nucleosides Promote RbFox1 Degradation and Dedifferentiation in Cardiomyocytes; A Two-Hit Hypothesis with Implications for Cardiotoxicity."
2022: The team of Bryce Nelson, John Wilson, Jan Andersson and Frank Wuest for the CRINA Research Day poster presentation "High yield cyclotron production of 203Pb for diagnostic SPECT imaging alongside 212Pb targeted radionuclide therapy."
2021: The team of TIffany Lo, Parnian Alavi, Nadia Jahroudi and Manijeh Pasdar for the CRINA Research Day poster presentation "Differential Effects of Plakoglobin Expression on the Oncogenic Properties of p53 Conformational and Contact Mutants."
This studentship, a partnership between CRINA and the Alberta Cancer Foundation (ACF), allows us to provide several undergraduate students with stipend support to conduct cancer research in CRINA members’ laboratories over the summer months.
Recipients:
2023: Hannah Dean, Angela Hamie, Khushi Patel, Maria Ren, Ali Simchi, Yifan Wu
2022: Alan Kulathanil, Ali Waheed, Jeremy Fung, Judy Ali, Kara Terry, Madihah Khan, Maiah Walters, Mariane Khoury, Melissa Aikema, Yingze Ma
2021: Jayden Pannu, Natnael Abate, Rianna Nanad, Angie Chen, Dongyu Shao, Heidi Nwosu, Cassidy Eckstrom, Shreya Ravi, Tony Yu
2020: Benjamin Schultz, Kerrylei Jabilona, Sargun Sokhi, Ryan Zhu
2019: Sahil Patel, Laura Enekegho, Angie Chen, Jessica Bennett, Anna Jutla
2018: Yea Jin Yoon, Pramal Kumar Patel, Asna Latif, Da Eun Choi, Sean Larade
Funded by the Kids with Cancer Society, this award recognizes the contributions of Dr. David Eisenstat to the area of pediatric oncology.
2023: Seth Peyton
2022: Tracy Lee
These awards are made possible with funding from the Terry Fox Research Institute.
Recipients:
2022: Sargun Sohki, Saymon Tejay, Rachel Yang,Tomas Gutierrez
2021: Bryce Nelson, Qi Feng Lin, Richard Yuen, Won-Shik (Daniel) Choi), Quinn Storozynsky
2020: Meghan Hall, Fatemeh Mashayekhi, Wisdom Kate, Mostafa Khairy, Marina Lemieszek, Quinn Storozynsky
This studentship, made possible by the Kids with Cancer Society, awards students whose research is relevant to childhood cancer.
Recipients:
2020: Paula Ospina Lopez and Ghazal Babolmorad
This studentship, made possible by a generous donation from the Roses of Hope Foundation, awards outstanding graduate students conducting breast cancer research.
Recipients:
2020: Joanne Smith, Natasha Rana
2019: Francisca Cristi Munoz, Zelei Yang, Daniel Krys (Learn more about their projects here)
2017: James Donnelly
The Boytzun Studentship in Colorectal Cancer will be awarded to a graduate student conducting colorectal cancer research.
Recipients:
2024: Sara Abd El-Hafeez & Mckenna Eklund