{"id":1479,"date":"2020-06-09T17:19:57","date_gmt":"2020-06-09T17:19:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/?p=1479"},"modified":"2020-06-09T22:25:11","modified_gmt":"2020-06-09T22:25:11","slug":"actua-prize-2020-awarded-to-masters-student-michelle-zurek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/actua-prize-2020-awarded-to-masters-student-michelle-zurek\/","title":{"rendered":"ActUA prize 2020 awarded to Master\u2019s student Michelle Zurek!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Michelle Zurek<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Congratulations to Michelle Zurek, Master\u2019s student in Biomedical Sciences, for winning the prestigious ActUA Prize 2020. The ActUA prize is awarded by the UAntwerp Service Council. It promotes personal development through an internship abroad at one of the partner institutions of the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE)<\/a> alliance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelle will head to the University of Eastern Finland in Kuopio, Finland to do her Master\u2019s thesis in the Molecular Medicine Research Group, led by Prof. Seppo Yl\u00e4-Herttuala, who is a colleague of Michelle\u2019s UAntwerp supervisor Prof. Guido De Meyer<\/a> (Physiopharmacology group<\/a>). The research group in Kuopio focusses on developing new gene and protein-based approaches for treating cardiovascular disease. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Seppo Yl\u00e4-Herttuala is known as a pioneer in cardiovascular gene therapy. His group developed the new concept of “Epigenetherapy”. In Epigenetherapy, the action of small RNAs is utilized by delivering only the small RNAs to cells, where they can then regulate gene expression by epigenetic mechanisms. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule that is essential in various biological roles for coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michelle will work on gene transfer vectors that are based on cell type-specific enhancer sequences to regulate Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) expression in endothelial cells. VEGF is a signaling protein produced by cells and it stimulates the formation of blood vessels. Michelle developed a strong interest in cardiovascular disease during her Bachelor and she is looking forward to extending her skills and knowledge during her research internship in Finland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI am very grateful for this awesome opportunity. It is a dream come true for me and I can\u2019t wait to start my internship to help find treatments for cardiovascular disease. I would like to thank the ActUA prize jury members and my supervisor Prof. Guido De Meyer. This will be a tremendous learning opportunity for me and I am grateful to UAntwerp for the support. I would also like to thank my family, my partner Toon Vaerewijck, and my friends for always believing in me and for fully supporting and encouraging me\u201d.  – Michelle Zurek<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Enjoying some non-study time.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Michelle was born and raised in Germany and came to UAntwerp to study Molecular and Cellular Biomedical Sciences<\/a>, in combination with a minor in Research. She has a strong interest in cardiovascular disease, epigenetics and cell death. When she graduates, Michelle plans to travel around the world for a few months and would then like to start a PhD on cardiovascular disease and epigenetics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Congratulations to Michelle Zurek, Master\u2019s student in Biomedical Sciences, for winning the prestigious ActUA Prize 2020. The ActUA prize is awarded by the UAntwerp Service Council. It promotes personal development through an internship abroad at one of the partner institutions of the Young Universities for the Future of Europe (YUFE) alliance.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1490,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"single-svg.php","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,1,30,92],"tags":[121,87,118,122,123],"class_list":["post-1479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-education","category-geen-categorie","category-research","category-student-life","tag-actua","tag-cardiovascular","tag-physiopharmacology","tag-prize","tag-yufe"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1479"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1492,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1479\/revisions\/1492"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uantwerpen.be\/fbd\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}