10 New Mentored Research Projects Awarded Through 2025 PeDRA Research Fellowships and April Emerging Investigator Research Grants Programs
June 19, 2025 – Six trainees have been awarded 2025 PeDRA Research Fellowships to conduct one year of mentored research under the guidance of a senior investigator in the field of pediatric dermatology. PeDRA continues to increase its annual investment in this growing and competitive program, with a total investment of $150,000 across the six projects in 2025.
An additional four individuals have been awarded a combined total of $17,500 through the first cycle of the 2025 Emerging Investigator Research Grants (EIRG) Program. This program provides opportunities for a broad group of medical students and pediatric residents to conduct short-term mentored research experiences in the field of pediatric dermatology. The second round of applications for the 2025 EIRG Program are due on October 17, 2025.
Click through the links below to learn more about each of these awardees and the funded projects.
2025 PeDRA Research Fellowships
- McKenzie Hanigan will conduct a project titled “Childhood Adversity and Pediatric Skin Disease: Investigating the Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences and Socioeconomics” under the mentorship of Sarah Coates, MD at the University of California, San Francisco.
- Stefanos Koutsoukos will conduct a project titled “Characterizing deficits in early-stage autophagy and lipid accumulation in iPSC-derived fibroblasts and keratinocytes from individuals with recessive dystrophic epidermolysis bullosa” under the mentorship of Ganna Bilousova, PhD at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus.
- Lais Lopes Almeida Gomes, MD will conduct a project titled “Identifying Reliable Measures of Disease Activity in Craniofacial Morphea” under the mentorship of Katharina Shaw, MD at the University of Pennsylvania.
- Angela Luo will conduct a project titled “Leveraging Large-Scale Electronic Health Records and Patient Surveys to Identify Comorbidities in Ichthyosis to Facilitate Transition from Pediatric to Adult Care” under the mentorship of Keith Choate, MD, PhD at Yale University.
- Meredith Manson will conduct a project titled “Characterizing the inflammatory signature of pediatric atopic dermatitis and concomitant atopic diseases in Thai patients” under the mentorship of Emma Guttman-Yassky, MD, PhD at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Siani.
- Andrew Murdock will conduct a project titled “Adolescent Acne Experience and Management in Adolescent-Caregiver Dyads” under the mentorship of Howa Yeung, MD, MSc at Emory University School of Medicine.
Special thanks to Incyte & Sanofi and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for their support of 2025 PeDRA Research Fellowships. We also extend our gratitude to individual donors and the PeDRA Board of Directors for their support in funding the 2025 Founders’ Fellowship through a successful end-of-year fundraising campaign in 2024.
2025 EIRGs (First Cycle / April Awardees)
- Hannah Chang, BA will conduct a project titled “Understanding non-prescription strategies for managing pediatric atopic dermatitis” under the mentorship of Raegan Hunt, MD, PhD at Baylor College of Medicine.
- Roya Rochell, BS will conduct a project titled “Developing a Point-of-Care Diagnostic Test for Pediatric Onychomycosis and Tinea Capitis” under the mentorship of Jillian Rork, MD at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.
- Aaron Gabriel Sandoval, MPhil, MSc will conduct a project titled “Development of Epidermolysis Bullosa Patient-Derived Skin Organoids” under the mentorship of Jennifer Huang, MD and Karl Koehler, PhD at Harvard Medical School.
- Benjamin Stone, BS will conduct a project titled “Evaluating Novel Diagnostic Generative AI Models for Evaluation (ENDGAME) of Pediatric Alopecia: A Comparative Study of Scarring and Non-Scarring Types” under the mentorship of Albert Yan, MD, FAAP, FAAD at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania.
Special thanks to Sanofi & Regeneron Pharmaceuticals for their support of the 2025 EIRG Program.
Looking for funding for your research project? PeDRA is currently accepting applications for several open funding opportunities. To learn more, visit PeDRA’s Grants & Fellowships Page or send us an email.
Interested in supporting research projects focused on childhood skin diseases through the PeDRA Grants and Fellowships Program? Click here to donate now or email us to discuss named grants opportunities.
If you aren’t already a PeDRA member, join us to be eligible to mentor a recipient of a future PeDRA Research Fellowship or EIRG.