Congratulations to Dr. Gabrielle Zuniga!

Frost lab MD/PhD student Gabbe Zuniga has successfully defended her dissertation! Gabbe's work focused on understanding the role of nonsense-mediated RNA decay and aberrant translation in the context of neurodegenerative tauopathy. She has also taken an active role in our Phase II clinical trial in patients with early Alzheimer's disease.

During her time in the lab, Gabbe had a first-author paper published in Alzheimer's and Dementia, and earned coauthorship on manuscripts published in Progress in Neurobiology, Cell Reports, and Current Opinions in Neurobiology. Additional first-author and co-first author papers are in the works! She was supported by the UTHSA Neuroscience T32, the UTHSA Translational Science Training TL1, the UTHSA Biology of Aging T32, and the UTHSA MSTP program. Gabbe was a Tau Consortium Fellow in 2020, and was awarded second place for her presentations at the Graduate Student Retreat and the South Texas Alzheimer's Conference. In addition to her many poster presentations, Gabbe had ten oral presentations, including the University College London: Neurodegeneration in Flies seminar series and serving as Keynote Speaker for UTHSA Graduate Student Research Day.

Now that Dr. Zuniga has completed the PhD portion of the South Texas Medical Scientist Training Program, she will be returning to medical school to finish out her last two years at the Long Campus. We will still see her around :)

Gabbe - congratulations on successful completion of your PhD. You make us all very proud. Your dedication and perseverance are truly inspiring.