Biochemical Journal Young Investigator Award

Elizabeth Ponder

Elizabeth L. Ponder graduated with a B.S. degree in Biochemistry and honors in Chemistry in 2004 from Lafayette College, Easton, PA. Her undergraduate research under the mentorship of Drs. Bernard Fried and Joseph Sherma focused on the effects of Echinostoma caproni and Schistosoma mansoni parasite infections on metabolite profiles in snail intermediate hosts and factors affecting shed parasite survival. Elizabeth enrolled in the Stanford University Microbiology and Immunology Ph.D. program in the fall of 2004 and joined the lab of Dr. Matthew Bogyo the following summer. Under the supervision of Dr. Bogyo, she is currently working on a thesis project characterizing the role of ubiquitin and ubiquitin-like modification pathways in the intra-erythrocytic life cycle of Plasmodium falciparum, the causative agent of human malaria. Elizabeth is working to characterize proteases involved in these pathways to both understand their biological roles in the parasite life cyle and to determine their potential as antimalarial drug targets. Her research is currently supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship Research Program.