Santa Clara University

Established in 2007 to complement the Gerald and Sally DeNardo Lectureship, this prize is given by the Dean to recognize outstanding science research accomplishment by a graduating senior who reflects the distinctive characteristics of a Jesuit education and is pursuing a career in the health sciences.

The 2011 DeNardo Senior Prize is awarded to Nicholas Giustini. Nick was nominated by Steven Suljak, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Nick is a senior bioengineering major headed to medical school next fall. With a GPA of 3.9, it is clear he is an outstanding student.

Nick has done research in the Suljak laboratory since Fall 2009. In that time, he has helped to complete a major project in the laboratory: the selection of aptamers specific for a glycosylated variant of VEGF. This work was completed last June. Nick’s major contributions to this multi-year project (Chris Rose and Mike Hayes were lead authors) was running a series of significant controls that were included as important evidence in the final manuscript:

Since early summer, Nick’s efforts have focused on (1) the further characterization of selectivity of our identified aptamer sequences and (2) initiating a project applying our technique toward the protein thrombospondin-1.

Nick will be presenting his work (as lead author) as a poster at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society this March in Anaheim:

“Characterization of aptamer selectivity toward glycosylated VEGF peptide variants.”.

Steve notes that Nick did two summers of research at Dartmouth (2008, 2009), looking at utilizing iron oxide nanoparticles as a potential treatment for cancer. His PI gave him a strong review when Nick was asking to join the Suljak research group.

It is also clear that Nick “reflects the distinctive characteristics of a Jesuit education.” While at SCU, in addition to his academic scholastic efforts, Nick has played a number of important roles. He has been a CF at Casa for the past two year, tutored extensively in chemistry and writing (at the campus writing center), and was a member of the 2008-2009 Global Medical Brigades that traveled to Honduras to provide medical assistance in rural communities. He has also been active as an officer in the Pre-Health Club and has been serving as an O'Connor Ethics Intern for the past year.