Tony Szempruch was a 2015 ARCS fellow in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia. His PhD research was recently selected for a 2016 Kaluza Prize, given by the American Society for Cell Biology in collaboration with Beckman Coulter Life Sciences to honor academic excellence in graduate student research. His studies on African trypanosomes, the cause of human African sleeping sickness, showed that these parasites release extracellular vesicles that transfer virulence factors between parasites. They can interact with host cells to cause pathology. His discoveries offer opportunities to develop new strategies for diagnosis and treatment of diseases caused by trypanosomes. Dr. Szempruch is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Caltech. For information on the Kaluza prize see:
