VP&S Student Awarded Porter Prize for Research Excellence

The initial spark that ignites a young person’s passion for science can come from anywhere, and for Andrew Alamban, a VP&S PhD student in the lab of Mustafa Aydogan, it came from dinosaurs and Hollywood.

“Growing up, I watched a lot of Dexter's Laboratory and MythBusters on TV, and I always thought that scientists were kind of cool,” Alamban says. “But it was the movie Jurassic Park that got me interested in molecular biology, because that's how they revived the dinosaurs.”

Alamban’s interests moved on from dinosaurs a while ago, but he kept his zeal for molecular biology, and his research has now been recognized with the 2026 Porter Prize for Research Excellence from the American Society for Cell Biology.

Each year, the society selects one graduate student to receive the Porter Prize based on the student’s contributions to the advancement of science and the novelty and creativity of their findings. The prize commemorates the pioneering spirit of cell biologist Keith R. Porter, who made significant contributions to cell biology through the use of electron microscopy.

“Andrew is an exceptionally thoughtful and talented scientist, and no doubt is a rising star in the field,” says Aydogan, who encouraged Alamban to apply for the award.  

Alamban, who expects to defend his thesis early next year, will present his award-winning research in December at the joint meeting of the ASCB and the European Molecular Biology Organization.

CUIMC News spoke to him recently about his scientific journey and how his current research on fruit flies may have human health implications.

On pursuing a career in science:

When I started college, I didn't know you could have a productive career in science. It seemed to me that everyone who studied biology went on to become a medical doctor, so that was my plan.

I was advised that I should get some research experience if I wanted to become a medical doctor, so I joined a lab that was studying gap junction channels, intracellular pores that connect neighboring cells, and I fell in love with research. That’s when I realized that science was a viable career option, and I decided to go to graduate school instead of medical school.

Finding a scientific passion:

I majored in molecular and cell biology and in math, and I took some classes on dynamical systems. I was fascinated by time-bound processes, but biology seemed to be static, at least when I was learning about it in college. I wanted to study how living things move and how they get there.

My adviser, Mustafa Aydogan, studies biological timing and has found that different parts of the cell have independent timers separate from the clock that controls division of the cell’s nucleus. I thought that was really interesting and that's how I got to join his lab.

Current work:

At the beginning, we were studying a very basic biological question: How do independent clocks inside a cell coordinate with each other? And then I branched off on a question that led to my whole thesis.

When cells divide, textbooks say the cytoplasm splits after the nucleus divides. We use fruit flies in our research, and we were seeing that sometimes the cytoplasm seems to divide before mitosis had even begun. We wondered what the point of that could be, and we found that it seemed to happen to nuclei that were later eliminated from the fly embryo.

We propose that perhaps the embryo uses this mechanism to eliminate bad nuclei. And it looks like nuclei are eliminated if they’re stressed out from producing excess reactive oxygen species. That's what we're following up on now, trying to identify the genetic players in this chemical phenomenon.

Ultimately the goal is to understand how the embryo keeps cells healthy and how does the embryo decide when a cell is too far gone and it’s time to get rid of it.

Connection to human health:

This type of cell elimination is being found in other studies in mice and human reproductive tissues.

There may be a common thread through a gene called Chek2. When Chek2 is mutated in the fly, the embryo can't eliminate nuclei anymore. When the same gene is mutated in a mouse, oocytes lose their quality control. And what’s really intriguing is the human connection: Chek2 seems to be associated with infertility.

I'm a very basic science guy, but to uncover a potential impact on human health adds another exciting dimension to my research. I really hope it proves to be useful.