HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program Panel

The Grant Writing Academy is hosting a virtual Hanna Gray panel discussion. Join us to hear from current Hanna Gray Fellows as they share their experiences applying for the fellowship and the Hanna Gray community.

The Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program supports postdoctoral scientists as they launch careers in academic science, equipping them to pursue scientific research at the highest levels and to recruit, mentor, and inspire future generations.

The HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellows Program opens November 3, 2026! Several changes have been made to the competition, including its merger with the Freeman Hrabowski Program upon receipt of a tenure-track faculty position. The HGF competition is open to postdoctoral scholars with no more than 7 years of postdoctoral experience expecting to start their faculty position by 2030.

Hanna Gray Fellows receive up to two years of salary or stipend support, additional support to cover certain expenses associated with their Fellowship, and tailored professional development, including personalized support for their faculty search.

Meet the Moderator:

Dr. Brittany Bush is a postdoctoral fellow in the department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences (Giardino Lab) investigating sex differences in neurocircuitry involved in sleep regulation, stress response, and reward. She is a proud graduate from historically black universities earning her BS in Biology from Savannah State University, and her, MS in biomedical research, MS in Clinical Research, and PhD in Biomedical Sciences all from Morehouse School of Medicine. Dr. Bush is currently a Howard Hughes Medical Institute 2024 Hanna Gray Postdoctoral Fellow and Stanford Propel and Stanford PRISM fellowship Alumni. While at Stanford, she has served as also Co-President of the Stanford Black Postdoc Association, facilitator for the Pathways to Neuroscience Program, and works closely with the MCHRI DRIVE summer program. She is passionate about increasing minority representation in STEM and mentoring students of color interested in pursuing a STEM career. As a co-lead for the Intro to Grant Writing Course, Brittany combines her passion for mentoring diverse trainees with practical guidance on preparing a strong grant application they can be proud of while managing the grant writing process with low stress. She is excited to share her tips and tricks to becoming a successful and effective grant writer.

Meet Your Panelists:

Dr. Whitney Stevens-Sostre is an HHMI Hanna H. Gray Fellow (2024 Cohort, Postdoctoral Phase) in the Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW-Madison). She earned her B.S. in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez in 2015 and her Ph.D. in Neuroscience from UW–Madison in 2023. Supported by an NIH Blueprint Diversity Specialized Predoctoral to Postdoctoral Advancement in Neuroscience (D-SPAN) F99/K00 Award, her doctoral research in Dr. Gail Robertson’s lab focused on structure-function relationships and gating mechanisms of hERG voltage-gated potassium channels. For her postdoctoral work in Dr. Mrinalini Hoon’s lab, she combines single-cell patch-clamp electrophysiology, high-resolution imaging, and transgenic models to investigate how ion channels regulate retinal circuit establishment, retinal ganglion cell excitability, and visual processing. Beyond the bench, Dr. Stevens-Sostre co-founded Black In Biophysics and serves as its President, collaborating with her team to lead national initiatives that empower underrepresented scholars and build inclusive scientific communities. Her research and career leadership have been recognized with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Postdoctoral Enrichment Award and the 2026 Henry Grass Rising Stars in Neuroscience Award.

Dr. Camillia Azimi is a synthetic immunologist and a 2024 HHMI Hanna Gray Postdoctoral Fellow in Miriam Merad and Brian Brown’s labs at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her research focuses on engineering novel chimeric antigen receptors (CARs) and developing in vivo engineering tools to reprogram macrophages at the disease site for targeted control of the disease. This work seeks to expand our understanding of macrophage signaling and to modulate macrophage behavior with an aim to develop new therapeutics in innate immunotherapy.

Dr. Sasha Fulton – Peripheral nerve injury triggers massive waves of cellular transformation needed to rebuild damaged neurons. Sasha Fulton is developing new gene therapy tools to study this mysterious process with unprecedented precision. She is using these tools to explore cellular regenerative mechanisms in rodents, including a species with extraordinary evolutionary adaptations for improved healing – the naked mole rat. Sasha is a 2024 Hanna Gray Fellow and current Postdoctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University Zuckerman institute, where one of the main goals of her work is to define the regulatory drivers of nerve repair and develop new regenerative therapies for nerve damage.

Dr. Victoria Waston-Zink is a 2024 Hanna Gray Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University. Her research program investigates the evolutionary mechanisms underlying major life-history transitions, particularly the evolution of terrestriality in land crabs.  She uses interdisciplinary and integrative approaches to explore the genomic, physiological, and developmental bases for their convergently evolved terrestrially adaptive traits and contextualizes her findings through the lenses of phylogenetics, ecology, and natural history.

Accommodations:

If you need a disability related accommodation to participate in this event (captioning, sign language interpreting, Braille, etc.), please contact the Diversity & Access Office at disability.access@stanford.edu or 650.725.0326. Requests should be received at least one week prior to the event.

Hanna H. Gray Series: