Candice Yip, a neuroscience PhD candidate in the lab of Max Heiman in the HMS Department of Genetics, received a 2017 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. The award recognizes outstanding achievement during graduate studies in the biological sciences. Recipients will participate in a scientific symposium on May 5, 2017.
In a 2016 paper, Yip discovered how an abnormal number of sensory neurons share space throughout the bodies of C. elegans worms. This led to insights into how organisms can co-opt existing genes for new purposes and how the complex patterning of cells in the nervous system arises from simple rules rather than adherence to a deterministic diagram.