Rutgers Neuroscience Students Awarded Travel Grants to Present Research at Global Conferences
Rutgers Brain Health Institute supports Ph.D., postdoctoral and M.D./Ph.D. trainees in presenting their work, networking with peers and advancing discoveries in neuroscience and mental health
The Rutgers Brain Health Institute (BHI) recently announced the recipients of the 2025-2026 Trainee Travel Awards, which recognize outstanding Rutgers neuroscience Ph.D. students, M.D./Ph.D. students and postdoctoral fellows. Each awardee receives $500 to help offset the cost of attending a national or international neuroscience or mental health conference.
These awards give early-career researchers the opportunity to connect with peers and leading scientists, strengthen their professional development, contribute to advancing impactful neuroscience research, and raise the visibility of Rutgers neuroscience and mental health research on a global stage.
Over the past three years, BHI has awarded approximately $30,000 to 60 trainees working with 48 different principal investigators from 18 departments across eight schools at Rutgers.
Awards are given across BHI’s four focus areas: neurodegeneration and injury, neurodevelopment, motivational and affective neuroscience, and cognitive and sensory neuroscience.
2025-2026 Trainee Travel Awards Recipients:
- Justin Burdge, postdoctoral fellow (Victoria Abraira’s lab)
- Edward Chuang, postdoctoral associate (Monica Driscoll’s lab)
- Marissa Calvano, Ph.D. student (Justin Yao’s lab)
- Meghal Desai, postdoctoral associate (Pabitra Sahoo’s lab)
- Shruti Ghumra, Ph.D. student (Pabitra Sahoo’s lab)
- I-Tzu Hung, postdoctoral associate (Jill Rabinowitz’s lab and Danielle Dick’s lab)
- Divyangi Kantak, Ph.D. candidate (Terri Wood’s lab)
- Li Xin Lim, postdoctoral associate (Andrew Westbrook’s lab)
- Cory McCabe, Ph.D. student (William Graves’s lab)
- Benton Purnell, postdoctoral fellow (Detlev Boison’s lab)
- Joel Raymond, postdoctoral fellow (Morgan James’ lab)
Meghal Desai, a postdoctoral associate in Pabitra Sahoo’s lab, presented her work at the International Society of Neurochemistry and the American Society of Neurochemistry (ASN-ISN) meeting 2025. “This experience has been truly inspiring, and I look forward to applying the insights gained to advance my research. I’m very thankful to BHI for supporting early-career researchers and creating valuable opportunities to share our work and build collaborations,” Desai said.
Alessandro Galloni, a postdoctoral fellow in Aaron Milstein’s lab, received the 2024-2025 Travel Award and attended the Computational and Systems Neuroscience (COSYNE) conference in Montreal. Galloni presented his work on biologically realistic recurrent neural network architectures for error propagation.
These travel awards underscore BHI’s commitment to fostering mentorship, developing robust educational programs and enhancing scientific collaborations.
