Dr. Jennifer DeLuca was awarded a Basil O’Conner Starter Scholar Award from the March of Dimes. This award is designed to support young scientists embarking on their independent research careers.

Dr. DeLuca received this honor for her research proposal, “Achieving Accurate Chromosome Segregation in Mitosis: The Role of the NDC80 Complex at the Kinetochore-Microtubule Interface.” The research described in this proposal focuses on understanding how cells equally divide their chromosomes during mitosis. Correct chromosome segregation is critical to human health. Aneuploidy (where cells have too many or too few chromosomes) is a known cause of many birth defects including Down and Turner syndrome. Funds from the March of Dimes Basil O’Conner Starter Scholar Award will be used to study the molecular mechanisms cells use to regulate chromosome segregation during mitosis to prevent aneuploidy.