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Pharmacology and Toxicology Students

Header for ADD

Pharmacology and Toxicology Students

2025-2026 ADD Lab Trainees

Qwynn Landfield (Wilcox Lab), PhD Student
Revathy Menon (Metcalf Lab), MS Student
Phuong Anh Bui, Undergraduate Researcher, UROP Recipient
Ferne Chirachanakul, Undergraduate Researcher
Nadia Faleh, Undergraduate Researcher, UROP Recipient
Veronica Peacock, Undergraduate Researcher, UROP Recipient
Alexander Scholl, Undergraduate Researcher
Taylor Simpson, Undergraduate Researcher
Ella Whitehead, Undergraduate Researcher, UROP Recipient
Roa'a Hamed (Metcalf Lab) Post Doctoral Research Associate
Ashwini Sri Hari (Metcalf Lab) Post Doctoral Research Associate
Katie Ebbert (Wilcox Lab), Post Doctoral Research Associate
Link to PHTX PhD Student Page
Link to PHTX Post Doc Page

photo of ADD Lab members

Trainee & Staff Good News

woman in front of Christmas Tree — Congratulations to Anh Phuong Bui (Metcalf Lab) for receiving a UROP award for Spring 2026. "For my project, I'm using FJC stain to visualize neuronal death in different timepoints in hippocampus and brainstem regions in Dravet Syndrome mice model. I will also be looking at using antibodies to visualize hypoxia markers in the same mice."

photo of student — Congratulations to Veronica Peacock for receiving a Spring 2026 UROP award! "I am so excited to work towards developing a thorough and accurate training set for a new learning model that will help make eeg review more efficient!" December 2025

Photo of trainees at CTSI Symposium — Congratulations to Qwynn Landfield (Wilcox Lab), who recently began their second year as a Utah Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI) STARS T32 trainee. Qwynn is shown here with other CTSI trainees at their annual symposium. November 2025

photo of ADD Lab members — ADD Lab November 2025

A photo of 5 people in a panel discussion — Congratulations to Ashwini Sri Hari, PhD, who recently presented at the 2025 National Postdoc Association Annual Conference in Boston. Ashwini spoke about the effective collaboration between the PDA (Postdoc Association – Student run) and PDO (Postdoc Office) on our campus. She recently stepped down as Senior Chair of the Utah Postdoctoral Association Board and is continuing to serve as a board member.

picture of women in front of leaves — Congratulations to Nadia Faleh (Metcalf Lab) for receiving a UROP award. Fall 2025

photo of woman in front of plain backdrop — Congratulations to Ella Whitehead (Wilcox Lab) for receiving a UROP award. Fall 2025

Qwynn showing their poster to students — Congratulations to Qwynn Landfield (Wilcox Lab) for their presentation at the European Meeting on Glial Cells in Health and Disease in Marseille in July 2025. Copyright: ©Network Glia (Pascal Delcey). Posted with permission. Qwynn has also recently presented at the Snowbird Neuroscience Symposium (October 2025).

5 people in hoods at graduation — Congratulations to Kaliana Veros (Wilcox and Keefe Labs), 2nd from left, who recently graduated with her PhD in Neuroscience and will join the Wilcox Lab as a post doc.

2 women in atrium — Congratulations to Ashley Zachery-Savella (Wilcox Lab) pictured here with Dr. Karen Wilcox, her mentor, after successfully defending her dissertation. Ashley graduated with a PhD in Neuroscience, and will continue in her MD/PhD program. Her dissertation was titled: Temporal evolution and drug effects on seizure dynamics: insights from dynamotype classification in animal models of epilepsy.

student receiving an award standing with professor — Congratulations to undergrad researcher Kish Jay (Wilcox Lab) who won first place at the Undergrad Research Symposium presenting on his work on the dynamotype project! Kish was funded for several semesters via UROP awards.

3 women with a signed photo of Skaggs building — Congratulations to Jill Dahle, longtime lab manager in the Wilcox Lab, on her retirement. Pictured here (L > R) Jill Dahle, Kristi Johnson, and Dr. Karen Wilcox. January 2025

Individuals participating in white elephant exchange at ADD Lab Annual Holiday Party — A snapshot from the annual ADD Lab Holiday Lunch and White Elephant exchange! December 2024

woman standing in front of a door holding an award — Congratulations to Lakshmini Balachandar who just received The Distinguished Oral Presentation Award at the CRANIA conference in Canada last week. She presented the work she did as a post-doc in the lab here. Congrats Mini!!!! Also congratulations for her new position in Peter Carlen's lab at the University of Toronto - so excited she is continuing to work in epilepsy!

photo of a person standing at a lecturn — Congratulations to Qwynn Landfield, the Co-Chair of the successful 2024 Snowbird Neuroscience Symposium

a woman stands in front of lecturn at conference — Congratulations to Ashley Zachery-Savella who recently passed her Step1CK test, and presented on seizure dynamotypes at the 2024 Snowbird Neuroscience Symposium. October 2024

Ashwini presenting at the MWSOT — Ashwini Sri Hari, PhD, presented at the Mountain West Society of Toxicology (MWSOT) meeting, held this year at the University of Utah. September 2024

photo of a student in front of their poster — Congratulations to Qywnn who was appointed to the CTSI STARS T32 Training Grant. Qywnn is pictured here at the 2024 COP Poster Session. August 2024

Congratulations to Jenny Huff, the August College of Pharmacy GEM. Jenny exceeds all expectations and "is a true leader in our lab." August 2024

ADD Staff gathered in the atrium at Laura Handy's Retirement Party — Congratulations to Laura Handy, long time ADD Staff Member, on her retirement. August 2024

a woman in front of a poster — Congratulations to Danielle Tso, a summer NARI undergrad researcher in the Wilcox Lab, for her poster presentation. August 2024

students and staff at summer picnic — ADD Lab members at the Summer 2024 PHTX Picnic. June 2024

2 people in front of a poster — Congratulations to Camille Tso, a summer BRIDGE-UP undergrad researcher in the Wilcox Lab, for her poster presentation. Pictured here with Jeffrey Mensah (Wilcox Lab). August 2024

Jeffrey Mensah speaking at COP graduation — Congratulations to Jeffrey Mensah, 2024 Wolf Prize recipient. Pictured here speaking at the College of Pharmacy Graduation, May 2024

a woman in front of a screen — Congratulations to Carena Cornelssen (Wilcox Lab) who successfully defended her dissertation and received her PhD in Biomedical Engineering, 2024

Dr. Karen Wilcox and Dr. Jeffrey Mensah at his dissertation defense — Jeffrey Mensah and Dr. Karen Wilcox at Jeffrey's Dissertation Defense, 2024

2 women standing in front of poster — Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Taylor Simpson (right), on her poster presentation at the University of Utah ACCESS Symposium. Ashwini Sri Hari, PhD, Taylor's mentor, is also pictured here. April 2024

2 women standing in front of poster — Congratulations to Ireland Kearns and Yujia Zhai, pictured here presenting their poster at the Triple I Symposium. April 2024

woman giving presentation — Congratulations to Ashley Zachery-Savella (Wilcox Labs) on her great talk about seizure dynamotypes at the MTSP retreat. September 2023

a student presenting her poster at SFN — Congratulations to Kaliana Veros (Wilcox & Keefe Labs) who presented a poster at SFN. November 2023

Congratulations to Kaliana Veros (Wilcox & Keefe Labs) -- she is the 2023-2024 Skaggs Graduate Research Fellowship Awardee!

photo of staff at picnic table for summer picnic — ADD Lab Staff at PHTX Summer Picnic, June 2023

Cameron Metcalf and his lab — Congratulations to Min-Jee Goh, PharmD, PhD (Metcalf Lab), who recently defended her dissertation. Min-Jee is pictured on the right, along with Dr. Ashwini Sri Hari and Dr. Cameron Metcalf

Graduate student Carena Cornelssen — Congratulations to Carena Cornelssen (Wilcox Lab) who received a travel fellowship to a Focused Ultrasound Meeting at Standford. She also received her MS in Biomedical Engineering, as part of her PhD Program. June 2023

woman giving presentation — Congratulations to Kaliana Veros for her presentation at the UNIT Symposium hosted by the T32 Utah Neuroimmunology Training Grant. April 2023

photo of Anna — Congratulations to Anna Everett, undergrad researcher, who just learned that she has been awarded an NSF-GRFP. She will head to graduate school in the fall. March 2023

woman in front of powerpoint — Congratulations to Laura Bell (Wilcox Lab), who recently defended her dissertation. Laura will be moving to the University of Virginia as a post doc. We look forward to watching your career soar!

Photo of post doc Alex Petrucci on colorful background — Congratulations to post doc Alex Petrucci, PhD (Wilcox Lab) for winning the University of Iowa's Graduate College’s 2023 Rex Montgomery Dissertation Prize Award. Alex was featured in this UIowa article: https://grad.uiowa.edu/news/2023/12/global-impact-epilepsy-research. Alex is currently doing epilepsy research in the Wilcox Lab, and was appointed to the University of Utah's Translational Neuroscience T32 under the direction of Dr. Kristen Keefe.

Congratulations to undergraduate researchers Skyler Blair, Sonia Osuna, and Eli Finlinson. Skyler recently presented her research at the OUR Symposium, Sonia received one of four Parent-Fund Undergraduate Research Scholarships, and Eli received a second semester of UROP funding (Eli). Fall 2022.

Dr. Ashwini Sri Hari — Congratulations to Ashwini Sri Hari (Metcalf Lab) who was accepted into the AES postdoctoral fellows program for this year's AES and received a fellowship from the Dravet Foundation. September 2022.

Lakshmini (Mini) Balachandar, PhD — Congratulations to Lakshmini Balachandar (Wilcox Lab) who was accepted into the AES postdoctoral fellows program for this year's AES. September 2022.

Graduate student Carena Cornelssen — Congratulations to Carena Cornelssen (Wilcox Lab) who received an award for her poster at the Huntsman Mental Health Institute Research Day! Her poster was titled "Optimization of focused ultrasound (FUS) for suppression of seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE)." 2022

Jeffrey Mensah — Congratulations to Jeffrey Mensah, who received the 2022 Grass Foundation Award from the American Epilepsy Society and the Scientific Program Committee. his award recognizes and honors eight outstanding young investigators conducting research in basic or clinical neuroscience related to epilepsy. His abstract, titled “Dose-dependent profiles of add-on drugs in a triple-drug therapy protocol in a mouse model of Dravet Syndrome” was selected from over 1,300 submissions for this honor.

woman standing in front of poster — Congratulations to undergraduate researcher Brielle Bingener (Wilcox Lab) who presented her UROP research!

Glenna Wallis — Congratulations to Glenna Wallis (Wilcox Lab), who successfully defended her dissertation: Drug resistant epilepsy - Microglia tailor their damage detection pathways and calcium signaling during the acute immune response after mouse viral brain infection and seizures. 2021

Laura Bell — Laura Bell (Wilcox Lab) received a D-SPAN F99/K00 pre-doc to post-doc transition award through NIH that will fund her continued work on NG2-glia and epilepsy. Congrats, Laura! 2021

grad students ADD program — ADD Grad Students Fall 2021 -- Laura Bell, Carena Cornelssen, and Jeffrey Mensah

Cameron Metcalf and his lab — Cameron Metcalf and his Lab

Peter West and his Lab

Karen Wilcox and her Lab — Dr. Karen Wilcox and her Lab (2021)

add-students — ADD Lab Students 2021