2023 Hannah T. Croasdale Award Recipient: Hanqing Guo

The Hannah T. Croasdale Scholar Award is presented to the graduating Ph.D. recipient who best exemplifies the qualities of a scholar. This individual possesses personal qualities of intellectual curiosity, dedication, and commitment to the pursuit of new knowledge, and to teaching. The award honors Professor Hannah T. Croasdale who performed research and taught biology for more than 40 years at Dartmouth. She was the first woman in the Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth to achieve the level of full professor.

We are delighted to announce the recipient of the 2023 Hannah Croasdale Award is Hanqing Guo.

Hanqing joined Bing He's lab in 2018 with a bachelor of science in biology from the University of Minnesota. She quickly demonstrated an aptitude for research and mentoring, going on to make substantial contributions to the field with her own work, generously mentoring lab colleagues, and serving as an ad hoc reviewer for several journal papers with her PI.

Her expansive creativity and stellar ability resulted in truly ground-breaking research in her field of developmental biology. During the first year in her thesis lab, Hanqing proposed a new model for understanding tissue folding. 

Drawing on her knowledge of computer modeling, quantitative live imaging and laser-mediated tissue mediation, she applied the relatively new tool of optogenetics to study tissue construction mechanisms. The result of this innovative approach was to identify that actomyosin contractility is unexpectedly dispensable for the folding process. This new model for tissue folding has resulted in four first-author papers and has overturned current paradigms in the field.

Hanqing defended her thesis in the Fall of 2022 and began an independent research postion as a Westlake Fellow at the Westlake University in China, testament to her remarkable aptitude for excellence. Please join me in congratulating Hanqing, in absentia, on her selection as the 2023 Hannah Croasdale Award recipient.