NIH Fellows’ Award for Research Excellence Winners
, by Maura Kate Costello, M.A.
Quiera Booker, Vicky Chang, Alexandra Harris, Rebecca Kelly, Azhar Khandekar, Kyra Mendez, Gauri Prasad, Maya Spaur, Jacob Williams, Shahriar Zamani
2025 NIH FARE Awards
NIH Fellows’ Award for Research Excellence (FARE) recognizes the outstanding scientific research performed by NIH intramural postdoctoral fellows and is sponsored by the NIH Fellows Committee, the Scientific Directors, and the NIH Office of Intramural Training & Education. Funded by the Scientific Directors, the FARE award constitutes a $1500 stipend for travel to present research at a scientific meeting.
The recipients of the 2025 NIH FARE Awards are:
Quiera Booker, Ph.D., M.P.H., Integrative Tumor Epidemiology Branch (ITEB)
"Motherhood and receipt of chemotherapy: a population-based study of young women with breast cancer"
Vicky Chang, Ph.D., M.P.H., Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Branch (OEEB)
"Farm animal exposures and the oral microbiome in the Agricultural Health Study"
Alexandra R. Harris, Ph.D., M.P.H., M.S., ITEB
"Association of early menarche with breast tumor molecular features and recurrence"
Rebecca L. Kelly, Ph.D., M.P.H., ITEB
"Mosaic loss of the Y chromosome in leukocytes is associated with prostate cancer risk"
Azhar Khandekar, B.S., ITEB
"Extrachromosomal DNA in lung cancer from never smokers"
Kyra Mendez, Ph.D., M.P.H., B.S.N., Clinical Genetics Branch
"The relationship between COVID severity and telomeres in the context of hematopoietic cell transplantation"
Gauri Prasad, Ph.D., Laboratory of Translational Genomics
"Cell type-specific effects of common germline variation on gene expression and pancreatic cancer risk"
Maya Spaur, Ph.D., Sc.M., OEEB
"Exposures to drinking water contaminants below regulatory limits and incident ovarian cancer in the California Teachers Study cohort"
Jacob Williams, Ph.D., Biostatistics Branch
"A novel polygenic risk scoring framework integrating common and rare variants for enhanced genetic prediction across ancestries"
Shahriar A Zamani, Ph.D., Radiation Epidemiology Branch
"Germline variants in cancer susceptibility genes and subsequent neoplasm risks after childhood cancer: A pooled analysis of two large-scale cohorts"