Discovery and Innovation: Research Day 2025

InFocus  •  Fall 2025 Issue  •  November 30, 2025

Pathology and Laboratory Medicine's Research Day 2025 was held on Tuesday, October 7, bringing more than 150 faculty, trainees, and research staff together for a full day of scientific exchange in the Biomedical Research Building's Gaulton Auditorium and Lobby. The event highlighted the exciting work of our early-career researchers from Penn and CHOP and underscored the department's commitment to interdisciplinary discovery.

After opening remarks from PLM Chair George J. Netto, MD the morning speaker sessions included presentations from Priya Sivaramakrishnan, MSc, PhD, discussing transcript-level tuning for embryonic cell fate; Parker C. Wilson, MD, PhD, focusing on senescence and DNA damage in kidney disease progression; Zhi Huang, PhD, introducing a co-evolving agentic AI system for medical image analysis; and Robert Potter, PhD, presenting whole-genome sequencing approaches to track intra-hospital norovirus transmission. Ramakrishnan Rajagopalan, PhD discussed improving diagnostic yield through reanalysis and multi-omics, and Pavel Kuksa, PhD reviewed large-scale genomic and genetic data integration for discovery at scale.

This year, a new Poster Blitz session allowed presenters to give a one-minute "elevator pitch" about their posters to other attendees. The blitz was followed by a poster session and networking lunch, allowing trainees and research teams to showcase a diverse array of projects in basic, translational, and clinical science. Four poster prizes were awarded this year. Faculty volunteers reviewed and selected one poster from each of two categories—Basic Science Research and Clinical/Translational Research. Additionally, all attendees had the chance to vote electronically and anonymously for their favorite poster in each category.

In the final speaker session, Mohammad Haj Dezfuilan, PhD presented new strategies to dissect antigen landscapes of T cells in cancer and autoimmunity; Mohamad-Gabriel Alameh, PhD discussed mRNA-LNP platforms beyond vaccine applications; Yang Li, MD, PhD described molecular mismatch risk assessment for minimizing alloimmune rejection in pediatric kidney transplantation; and Melissa Gilbert, PhD, detailed advancements in high-throughput diagnostics for variants of uncertain significance.

The event concluded with closing remarks and the announcement of the poster awards:

• Basic Science Research – Judges' Selection:
  Jonathan Xu
  Laboratory of Dr. Zhi Huang
  SpatialFinder: A Human-in-the-Loop Vision-Language Framework for Prioritizing High-Value Regions in Spatial Transcriptomics

• Basic Science Research – People's Choice:
  Huajun Bai
  Laboratory of Liming Pei
  Role of GDF15 in chronic kidney disease associated cachexia

• Clinical/Translational Research – Judges' Selection:
  Shin Seo
  Laboratory of Dr. Saba Ghassemi
  Increasing the Efficacy of Non-Activated CAR T Cells by Modulating IFN1 Signaling

• Clinical/Translational Research – People's Choice:
  Ravikiran Ramjee
  Laboratory of Dr. Ping Wang
  Ultrasensitive Quantification of PD-L1 Expression on Urine-Derived Extracellular Vesicles With Time-Domain Modulated Optofluidics

A sincere thank you to the presenters, poster judges, and the Research Day Planning Committee - Dr. Li-San Wang, Dr. Taku Kambayashi, Dr. MacLean Nasrallah, Dr. George Xu, Dr. Babak Faryabi, Sarah Irish, Jennifer Wolfe, and Bridget Callaghan - for all of your work in making the day such a wonderful success. 

Research Day 2025 once again highlighted the depth and breadth of innovation within Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, fostering meaningful scientific dialogue and celebrating the collaborative spirit that drives discovery across the Penn research community. Photos from the event can be found in this issue's Photo Book.