UNC Bioinformatics and Computational Biology graduate student Luvna Dhawka (Natalie Stanley lab) has been awarded a 2026 Diana Jacobs Kalman/AFAR Graduate Student Award in Geroscience.
This $5,000 award recognizes PhD students who have shown leadership, collaboration, and productivity in aging research. Luvna’s work uses computational single-cell methods to study how CNS and peripheral immune signatures adapt in aging and neurodegeneration. She has applied these techniques to characterize how the immune system adapts in ALS and to characterize how microglia adopt their transcriptomic signatures with age. During the summer of 2026, Luvna also completed an internship at Bristol Myers Squibb, where she continued to work on neurodegeneration.