Celebrating Graduate Student Success: Tendai Mafireyi

Tendai Mafireyi, a Ph.D. student in chemistry professor Robert Strongin's lab, was recently honored by being named the Top Chemistry Graduate Student at the Sigma Xi 2020 Annual Meeting and Student Research Conference.

Sigma Xi recognized Mafireyi for a presentation he gave on his work on the design, synthesis, and application of a novel technology to detect the enzyme thioredoxin reductase. Thioredoxin reductase is a biological molecule often overexpressed in some cancers, such as lung cancer and melanoma. Mafireyi's work results from a collaboration between Strongin's lab and researchers at Oregon Health & Science University and could pave the way for rapid, selective, and non-invasive cancer detection methods.

Mafireyi will complete his Ph.D. work and graduate from PSU in Spring 2021. He hopes to secure a postdoc or join a drug development team at a biopharmaceutical company in the future.

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