A Peek at This Year’s Postbac Poster Day

Annual Event Provides Showcase for IRP Postbaccalaureate Fellows

By Brandon Levy

Wednesday, May 28, 2025

As informative as undergraduate science courses can be, there’s no better way to learn the ins and outs of biology than to scrutinize and manipulate it in the lab every day. That’s why so many science enthusiasts flock to NIH after college to participate in the IRP Postbaccalaureate IRTA Program, which allows newly minted grads to spend a year or two working full-time in a lab at NIH. And rather than demonstrating the knowledge they’ve gained on a test, IRP postbacs get to present their research at NIH’s Postbac Poster Day each year, an environment akin to the poster sessions at scientific conferences many postbacs will be attending as they continue their scientific careers.

This year, more than 900 IRP postbacs showed off their research at the event, and unlike prior years, all their presentations were done during one absolutely jam-packed day rather than being spread over two days. Read on to learn about how five of them have taken advantage of the opportunity to work in IRP labs over the past year.

Angel Obiorah: Cutting off Cancer’s Blood Supply

Some people know in high school or even earlier that they want to become scientists, while others stumble into a scientific career. In Angel’s case, it was the latter, as a “serendipitous” encounter with a flyer advertising paid summer research opportunities during college led her to step foot into the lab for the first time. 

“Naturally, I jumped at the chance!” she remembers.

And she has continued following the path of a future scientist ever since. After graduating from the University of Maryland, College Park, last year, she joined the lab of IRP senior investigator David FitzGerald, Ph.D., where she now contributes to her team’s efforts to improve cancer treatment. Specifically, her research focuses on antibody-based therapeutics, which utilize an antibody protein that binds to a specific target on a cancer cell or interferes with a specific cancer cell function. The antibodies Angel is working on include an antibody that blocks a receptor for vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), which is responsible for helping create new blood vessels to feed cells — both healthy ones and tumor cells.

“This is particularly important because, although anti-VEGF therapies can initially be effective, patients often develop resistance,” Angel explains. “Our goal is to target this receptor to produce a more robust anti-tumor response, potentially even in cancers that resist traditional anti-VEGF therapy.”

Angel joined Dr. Fitzgerald’s lab because, “I believed I could learn a lot from him,” she says, and that prediction has certainly come true. But even more than “the independence to drive a research project” and the mentorship she has received in her lab, she has enjoyed getting to know the many other postbaccalaureate fellows studying cancer at NIH. 

“I’m constantly inspired by their passion for science and feel excited about the future of the field after talking with them,” she says.

Fun fact: Angel is a big fan of Formula 1 racecar driving, especially the McLaren racing team.

Erixberto Olivencia Álvarez: Evaluating Exercise’s Effects in the Earliest Stage of Life

One clear indicator of how attractive NIH is to researchers at all stages of their careers is the number of people willing to cross oceans for the chance to work there. Erixberto brought his interest in reproductive biology with him from Puerto Rico, where undergraduate courses on the subject and a stint in a lab developing ways to improve sheep breeding spurred him to wonder about the factors that influence human health before we are even born.

“To me, it is fascinating how organisms can go from two reproductive cells to one cell to a complex multicellular system,” he says. “The mechanisms involved in this process can be susceptible to alterations that can disrupt the course of development, having negative impacts on the health of the individual. Through my research I aspire to help understand the pathways being negatively affected by environmental stressors.”

In pursuit of that goal, Erixberto joined the lab of IRP Stadtman investigator Carlos Guardia, Ph.D., where he has spent the past two years exploring how environmental factors like a pregnant woman’s exercise habits might influence biological processes in the unborn child she is carrying. By studying pregnant mice that get different levels of exercise, he has discovered that a prospective mother’s physical activity affects a fetus differently depending on whether the developing mouse pup is male or female. More specifically, his experiments have revealed that the mother mouse’s physical activity causes a process called autophagy to ramp up more in the placenta — the organ that connects mother to developing baby — when the fetus is male compared to when it is female. Autophagy is a recycling process that gets rid of old or damaged cellular components so their parts can be reused, and it is an important way cells stay healthy when environmental stressors throw them off balance, so sex differences in the amounts of autophagy triggered by exercise may provide hints as to the ability of developing children of different sexes to remain healthy when the going gets rough. 

“I’m trying to shed some light on the dynamics involved in placental development, more specifically how the placenta adapts and copes with environmental stressors to assure proper fetal development,” Erixberto explains. “Understanding this is important because our health is being shaped from the moment we are conceived.”

“Knowing that this organ responds differently based on the fetus’ sex will help us understand and hopefully prevent diseases that have prenatal origins and have a different prevalence between the sexes,” he adds.

Just like the developing mice he studies must adjust in stressful situations, Erixberto has found that it takes hard work and determination to find success even in a place like NIH that provides abundant resources and mentorship to young scientists. He describes his time as a postbac as “a process of exponential growth and learning, but also a constant act of perseverance and resolve.” Fortunately, that process has been made easier for him by the comradery he feels amongst NIH’s many talented researchers.

“My favorite part of this experience has been working alongside amazing scientists from all around the world with very diverse backgrounds, but all sharing the genuine desire of advancing science,” he says.

Fun fact: In his free time, Erixberto enjoys slacklining, a sport similar to tightrope walking in which participants walk, run, or even sit and meditate on a piece of fabric anchored between two points and suspended above the ground. He also likes to cook and bake. “To me, the kitchen is like a lab where you can eat your experiments,” he says.

Katherine Landler: Stretching the Shelf-Life of Donated Blood

Katherine has loved science since elementary school, where it was her favorite subject, and high school biology expanded her knowledge to the point that she began mulling a career in biomedical research. She brought this interest to college with her at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she worked in labs studying a wide variety of topics, including neuroscience and HIV. 

When eyeing NIH as a chance to gain more research experience, she decided to try her hand at studying something completely unrelated to her undergraduate research experiences, and one that was more directly related to healthcare. This led her to join NIH’s Early Translation Branch, which uses a variety of high-tech methods to identify and test new treatments for many different illnesses.

“I was excited to join my lab because I wanted to learn more about translational research and how new research methodologies speed up the development of therapeutics,” Katherine says.

Katherine’s research at NIH ended up focusing not on developing treatments that would be given directly to patients, but rather on treatments that would extend the lifespan of donated blood, which degrades over time and becomes less safe to transfuse into patients the longer it sits on the shelf. This is particularly problematic for medical facilities that can only sporadically receive new supplies of blood, like at remote military bases. Fortunately, by using ‘high-throughput screening’ to simultaneously test the effects of many different compounds on red blood cells, Katherine and her colleagues managed to identify 28 molecules that may prove useful for slowing the degradation of stored blood.

“If we identify a molecule that improves current storage solutions, this will help increase the blood available for patients for transfusions,” she says. “This is important because it makes whole blood as a treatment strategy for massive bleeding easier to implement in austere settings, like military settings.”

Just over eight months into her postbac experience at NIH, Katherine is glad she decided to expand her horizons by participating in research unlike any she had performed before. By the time she finishes her stint in the Early Translation Branch, she is sure she’ll be able to handle anything the next phase of her scientific training might throw at her.

“This postbac has given me the opportunity to work with incredible scientists and learn new biochemical and cell-based lab techniques while making a valuable contribution to preclinical research,” she says. “This experience has increased my confidence in my abilities as a researcher and my readiness for graduate school.”

Fun fact: Katherine is a licensed emergency medical technician (EMT) and likes to spend her downtime completing crossword puzzles.

Harris Ebrahim: Preventing Breast Cancer Progression

Harris’ interest in becoming a scientist is rooted in his rich relationship with his aunt, a refugee from Afghanistan. Despite not being allowed to pursue an education in her home country and knowing only a small amount of English when she came to the U.S., Harris’ aunt eventually earned an undergraduate degree.

“We grew up in the same house together and one of my earliest childhood memories is her giving me a science encyclopedia as a gift,” Harris recalls. “She was my role model and my friend.”

Tragically, his aunt was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer during Harris’ sophomore year at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Chemotherapy provided little help, and she passed away three months after her diagnosis. 

“Throughout her cancer journey, I was curious why she was not responding to treatment, and the more I began to research, the more I realized the need to engineer novel treatments for cancer,” Harris says. “I wanted to join a lab at NIH that would combine engineering principles with cancer research.”

He found such an opportunity with the lab of Manu Platt, Ph.D., where Harris has been looking for a way to prevent breast cancer from spreading, a process called metastasis. In order to metastasize, a cancer needs to ‘invade’ nearby, non-cancerous tissue. In the case of breast cancer, it must worm its way through a protein called collagen that makes up a major part of the breasts. For that reason, Harris is specifically studying how certain treatments affect the ability of breast cancer to spread through dense ‘gels’ laden with collagen in order to simulate the disease’s environment in the breast.

His most recent experiments have specifically tested a treatment that inhibits several members of a family of enzymes called cathepsins, which normal cells use to break down collagen when needed but which can also be produced by cancer cells. Inhibiting cathepsins, Harris has found, reduces the ability of breast cancer cells to migrate through those collagen-rich gels. Now, he wants to follow up on that by creating new gels that simulate the body’s bone marrow, one of the places breast cancer can spread to once it escapes the breast.

“Engineering new gels for invasion experiments will help to investigate the role cathepsins play in other environments, like the bone marrow,” Harris explains. “Experiments like these will help to understand the complex mechanisms behind cathepsin regulation and potential treatment options to inhibit cancer invasion and metastasis.”

Harris says his time at NIH so far has helped him grow as both a scientist and a person. Not only is he learning about what it’s like to work as a scientist, but he has also “met so many amazing people from around the world” and “made so many new friends,” he says. However, the best part of working at NIH for him has been the knowledge that he is walking in the footsteps of many great scientists that came before him.

“My favorite part of being a postbac is being in an environment where I know so many influential people have been,” he says. “It motivates me to work harder.”

Fun fact: Harris can speak three languages. He is fluent in English and Dari, a Persian dialect that is one of Afghanistan’s two official languages, and he is also proficient in German.

Aidan Boving: Scrutinizing the Structure of a Safer Antibiotic

Although Aidan’s interest in science was certainly nurtured inside several classrooms and research labs during college, it originated in the great outdoors.

“I grew up in a relatively rural part of Rhode Island, which meant I spent a lot of time outdoors growing up, and I became fascinated with the natural world,” Aidan recalls. “Once in high school, chemistry and biology experiments grabbed my attention, and my college course work allowed me to explore this passion further.”

The curious behavior of creatures too small for us to see with the naked eye proved particularly alluring to Aidan, leading him to pursue research in two microbiology labs during his undergraduate years at the University of Rhode Island. When it came time to select a lab at NIH in which to pursue further scientific training, the team led by IRP senior investigator Clifton Barry, Ph.D., was a natural fit.

“I decided to join NIH’s Tuberculosis Research Section because the lab’s focus on tuberculosis and tuberculosis drug discovery meant I could explore research that combined my interests in chemistry, biology, the natural world, and helping people all in one place,” Aidan explains.

Aidan’s particular project focuses on an experimental drug dubbed MK-7762 that the Tuberculosis Research Section developed in collaboration with pharmaceutical company Merck by modifying the structure of one of the most common treatments for tuberculosis, Linezolid. Although Linezolid is a go-to for tuberculosis treatment, it can cause significant side effects because it not only disrupts tuberculosis bacteria’s ability to make proteins, but also protein production within the energy-producing mitochondria that power our own cells. MK-7762, however, only messes with bacteria, and Aidan was tasked with helping his lab figure out why. Using a special microscope, he and his labmates determined which part of MK-7762’s structure makes it less toxic to human cells than Linezolid.

“These findings provide a highly detailed model explaining the beneficial effects of our novel antibiotic over Linezolid, a traditionally used, relatively toxic antibiotic,” Aidan says. “This information could aid clinical trial decision-making and provide insights into what to look for when searching for new antibiotics.”

Aidan calls his two years working in the IRP “a transformative experience” and says it has helped him become “a confident scientist.” He attributes much of this personal growth to the colleagues he has gotten the chance to know during that time.

“One of my favorite parts of being at NIH has been seeing how everyone involved in research is so knowledgeable, excited, and willing to share about their research niche,” he says. “This has allowed me to learn so much over a wide range of topics in just two years, and the excitement motivates me.”

Fun fact: When Aidan isn’t in the lab working with bacteria, he sometimes spends his free time working with another microbe — yeast, in this case — to brew his own beer. He also enjoys wood carving, skiing, and surfing.

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