Postdoctoral Service Awardees

Serena De Stefani, PhD

Department of Psychology and Behavioral Health, College of Medicine

Dr. De Stefani joined the Postdoctoral Association's leadership as vice chair in early 2025. Since joining, she has worked diligently to engage the postdoc community across Ohio State through networking, social, and professional development events. Under her guidance, the PDA has expanded the number of recurring social and networking events and has helped many postdocs have an increased sense of belonging here in Columbus. Her efforts have been instrumental in rejuvenating the PDA.

Serena joined the lab of Dr. Ivy Tso in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health in Fall 2023 after earning a PhD in Cognitive Psychology from Rutgers University. She is interested in exploring how cognitive constructs like cognitive maps and probabilistic thinking underpin social impairments in psychopathology, particularly in psychosis and autism. Her research techniques include behavioral tasks, personality questionnaires, virtual reality environments, and computational modeling. In her work, she aims to integrate different fields, such as phenomenology and cognitive science. She is also passionate about statistics (and its philosophical underpinnings), which she enjoys teaching. Serena spends her free time reading, listening to podcasts, biking, and exploring Columbus.

Srishti Gaur, PhD

Department of Food, Agricultural and Biological Engineering, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences

Dr. Gaur was a leader in the Postdoc Association during 2022 and 2023, overseeing the international affairs subcommittee. Srishti was selected for this year's award not just for her hard work to improve the postdoc training environment, but also her empathy and willingness to go above and beyond to help her peers acclimate and thrive at Ohio State and in Columbus. Her nominator indicated his transition to working in the United States would not have been as easy without the support and guidance of Srishti in helping him navigate moving to and working in a new country.

Srishti received her master’s and PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, specializing in Land and Water Resources Engineering. Her areas of research expertise include hydrology, eco-hydrology, hydro-climatology, data science, and remote sensing. She is passionate about combining the strengths of process-based models with the flexibility of data-driven approaches for effective water resources management.

Emily Bowman, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar

Dr. Bowman is currently serving as the chair of Ohio State’s Postdoctoral Association.  Previously, she served as co-chair of the Professional Development committee, where she organized numerous events and workshops to promote additional skills training for postdocs.  Notably, she developed the inaugural recruitment and networking event for postdocs looking to pursue industry careers and is currently working on translating that event to a virtual platform for 2020.  Emily is also a member of the University Research Committee.  Recently, she has been donating her time and expertise to Ohio State’s newly built COVID-19 testing lab, which relied on a volunteer workforce to meet increased testing capacity demands.

Emily is currently completing her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Nicholas Funderburg, where she studies chronic immune activation and increased cardiometabolic disease risk among people with HIV.  She earned her PhD in Virology & Immunology from the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine.  Her thesis work focused on mechanisms underlying the development of Epstein-Barr virus-associated B cell lymphomas.  Prior to the start of her PhD, she worked as a research assistant at the University of Michigan studying immunological pathways contributing to chronic respiratory diseases.

Mahesh Chemudupati, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar

Dr. Chemudupati received his bachelor’s degree in biotechnology from Amity University in India. He went on to complete my doctoral studies in Dr. Stephen Osmani’s lab at The Ohio State University Department of Molecular Genetics. He is currently in Dr. Jacob Yount’s lab in the Department of Microbial Infection and Immunity, where his research is focused on understanding innate immunity to virus infections. Chemudupati is specifically interested in mechanisms by which interferon-stimulated gene expression is regulated and its consequences on susceptibility to virus infections and resulting pathology.

Nathalie Houssin, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Optometry

Dr. Houssin is a developmental cell biologist. Her journey through science started with getting a teaching degree in 2000, in Paris, France. While being a High School Biology teacher, she joined the Moreau’s Lab at the Jacques Monod Institute for completing her Ph.D. studying cell migration in Frog embryos. In Fall 2011, she joined the Thisse lab at University of Virginia as Postdoctoral researcher for studying the construction of vertebrate embryos from morphogen gradients using Zebrafish embryos (if you’re ever interested, this work has been published in Science). For her second postdoctoral project, she joined Dr. Dickinson’s lab at VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) and focused on the formation of the embryonic mouth during orofacial development. She is currently working at Ohio State University in the Plageman’s Lab from the Optometry department, studying ocular lens development. She joined the PDA in June 2017 as an officer of the Development Committee. She has then taken the lead for organizing the PDA-VWR Vendor Shows, our main fundraiser to sponsor postdocs travel awards and professional workshops. Lately, she organized a Flash-talk showdown sponsored by ThermoFisher to promote postdocs exposure on campus and create an additional opportunity for postdocs to get a Travel award.

Atsuko Uchida, PhD

Postdoctoral Scholar, Department of Neuroscience

Dr. Uchida has been an active member in the PDA since its founding in 2013, and as co-chair of the Social Committee of the Ohio State Postdoc Association (PDA) since 2016, Dr. Uchida has put forth remarkable effort to plan challenging and entertaining social events for the PDA.  Her services during National Postdoc Appreciation Week last year were especially noteworthy as they greatly enhanced our PDA members’ networking opportunities. Dr. Uchida is currently a member of Dr. Anthony Brown’s laboratory in the Department of Neuroscience in the College of Medicine. She has conducted studies about a microscopic protein scaffold of filaments which provides structural support to the cell. She is especially focused on investigating the intracellular transport system of “neurofilament”, which is the most abundant cytoskeletal filament in nerve cells.

Brenda Reader, PhD

Postdoctoral fellow, Molecular Mechanisms of Lung Inflammation training program

Dr. Reader demonstrated her dedicated service to the Postdoctoral Association as co-chair on the Policy and Advocacy committee 2015-2016 as well as taking on as co-chair of the PDA from 2016 to 2017.  Her postdoctoral training started in 2013 and she became a postdoctoral fellow in the Molecular Mechanisms of Lung Inflammation training program in 2014 until finishing her training in 2017. After finishing her postdoctoral training, Dr. Reader became Manager of the Comprehensive Transplant Center Human Tissue Biorepository and Senior Research Associate in the College of Medicine.

Nancy Moran, PhD

Postdoctoral researcher, Comprehensive Cancer Center

Dr. Moran has not only contributed to the leadership of the Ohio State Postdoctoral Association (PDA) as a former co-chair but has been an outstanding advocate through her efforts as a member of the PDA’s Policy and Advocacy and Professional Development Committees. Much of her efforts centered around a proposal from the PDA to establish an Office of Postdoctoral Affairs and paid parental leave for postdocs, both proposals are being evaluated by the university leadership. After a 5-year position as a postdoctoral researcher and trainee of Dr. Steven Clinton in the Comprehensive Cancer Center, Dr. Moran will be moving to Baylor College of Medicine/USDA Children’s Nutrition Research Center (Houston, TX) as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics-Nutrition.