The Victoria Finnerty Travel Award supports conference-attendance costs for undergraduate GSA members who are presenting research at the Annual Drosophila Research Conference. #Dros25 will be held in San Diego, CA from March 19–23, 2025.

Victoria Finnerty, who died in February 2011, was a long-time member of the Genetics Society of America and served the Drosophila community and the genetics community at large in many capacities. A wonderful geneticist, Vickie’s ground-breaking work as a graduate student used high-resolution recombination analysis to dissect gene structure. This set the stage for a 35-year career in which she excelled as a gifted teacher as well as research scientist. Vickie was also a wise and compassionate mentor and teacher for whom interactions with her students was a constant joy. She constantly sought new ways to engage undergraduates in their genetics courses and in research; this travel fellowship fund continues Vickie’s stellar example.

Elena Dapi, University of Rochester

My research focuses on the effect of optogenetically controlled hemocyte migration on extracellular matrix deposition and embryonic development.

Alyssa Davis, Georgia State University

My research focuses on identifying and measuring behavioral differences due to intergenerational trauma in a Drosophila model, with the goal of developing a robust behavioral model for future intergenerational trauma research.

Carlie Epstein, Georgia State University

I study an Alzheimer’s disease associated protein in fruit flies.

Sienna Ficken, University of Missouri Kansas City 

My research uses fruit flies to understand how muscles develop and build the mini motors that allow them to contract, and to understand what goes wrong in muscle diseases like Myotonic Dystrophy Type I that causes muscle degeneration.

Ava Hasenoehrl, Lewis-Clark State College

Our lab uses Drosophila to study long term consequences of DNA damage during early development. 

Sarah Iannone, College of the Holy Cross

I am investigating the role of glial ion channels and transporters in phagocytosis following neuronal injury in Drosophila melanogaster.

Ananda Kalukin, Cornell University

My research investigates how chronic bacterial infection affects host metabolism.

Hannah Lee, University of California, Irvine 

My study investigates whether varying dietary conditions also influence the epigenetic regulation transposable elements (TEs).   

Amelia Roselli, Davidson College 

Investigating the tissue-specific transcripts of and functionally validating the orthologous relationships of ATAD1 and nmd.

Marciella Shallomita, Eastern Mennonite University

The loss of the serotonin transporter gene, which encodes a protein responsible for serotonin uptake, in flies leads to increased sleep, starvation resistance, and decreased feeding.

Avi Strok, Lewis & Clark College

I study the effects of long-term nicotine exposure on the behavior and physiology of adult Drosophila melanogaster.

Diya Surray, Rutgers University

I am studying which genes are involved in female fertility and the creation of viable oocytes.

Chloe Wells, Emory University

I am interested in studying how developmental growth pathways collaborate to regulate signaling within the Drosophila germline stem cell niche. 

Junan Zhu, University of California, Irvine

My research focuses on engineering fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) to become a model for cancer immunotherapies that allow immune cells to eat cancer cells.

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