Zachary Hartman

3rd place oral presentation winner at the annual E.J. Van Liere Convocation

Zach Hartman, a graduate student in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Training Program, was recently awarded a 3rd place prize for his oral presentation at the annual E.J. Van Liere Convocation. The Van Liere Convocation is a competitive opportunity for selected students to give talks on their research, and the event is open to the graduate and professional students within a Health Sciences degree or training program. Zach’s research explores the mechanism by which cancer cell motility is controlled by the activity of Src homology phosphotyrosine phosphatase 2 (SHP2). His work examines how SHP2 appears to direct movement by first migrating to the edge of cells and then regulating cell protrusion.

Zach received his BS degree from West Liberty State College and was accepted into the graduate program at WVU in the spring of 2008. He joined the BMB training program and is working very hard towards completing his dissertation work under the supervision of Dr. Yehenew Agazie, an Associate Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center. Congratulations Zach!

For more information regarding the annual HSC Research Day event please visit: http://www.hsc.wvu.edu/ResOff/vlrd

Pre-Doctoral Fellowship

Zachary Hartman was recently awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program in Breast Cancer. Zach studies SHP2, a protein tyrosine phosphastase, that is implicated in signaling downstream of EGF receptor family proteins and in the development of breast cancer. He is combining his interests in computational modeling and biochemistry to develop novel therapeutic strategies to inhibit the activity of SHP2. Zach graduated from West Liberty State College where he majored in Chemistry and minored in Music. In the fall of 2008, Zach entered the Biomedical Sciences graduate program at HSC, and in the spring of 2009 he joined the BMB program and Yehenew Agazie's lab to conduct his dissertation research. In the spring of 2010, Zach passed his Qualifying Exam and will be defending his dissertation proposal late in the fall. Congratulations Zach (and Yehenew)!