Trainee Associate Membership Program Announces 2023 Awardees

The Cancer Research Training and Education Coordination (CRTEC) Core of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center (HICCC) is proud to announce the recipients for the 2023 Trainee Associate Member (TAM) predoctoral pilot grants, postdoctoral pilot grants, travel awards and papers of the year. These awards support up-and-coming graduate and medical student and post-graduate researchers across Columbia University who are working on all aspects of cancer research.

The TAM program was created in spring 2021 to promote the interests of trainees in cancer at Columbia, with an emphasis on cultivating a community of trainees at the HICCC in which they can thrive. The program gives its members access to a community of cancer trainees and mentors, pilot grants, seminar series and educational events, career development opportunities, and more.

Congratulations to the 2023 TAM Pilot Grant Winners.

Predoctoral Award

This award provides support to MD or MD/PhD clinical fellows/instructors, PhD postdoctoral fellows, and associate research scientists at Columbia University Irving Medical Center who are in the initial phases of their research endeavors, aiming to gather preliminary data to propel their projects forward. Pre-doctoral trainees receive one-year of $5,0000 in funding.

Nicolae Ciobu Zubenco, PhD candidate in Medicine - Cardiology
Mentor: Sanghavi Viraj Rajesh, PhD
Project: "Understanding the role of tumor microenvironment remodeling and antitumor immunity in overnutrition-promoted hepatocellular carcinoma " 

Kate Cunningham, B.S in Medicine- Hematology & Oncology
Mentor: Anil Rustgi, MD, Irving Professor of Medicine; Director 
Project: "Characterizing the Metastatic Kinetics of Pathogenic TP53 Mutation R282W in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma" 

Postdoctoral Award

 This funding opportunity is for postdoctoral students, residents/fellows and associate research scientists and has a value of $10,000 each. 

Alvaro Curiel Garcia, MSc, PhD in Medicine- Digestive & Liver Diseases
Mentor: Kenneth Olive, PhD
Project: "Pharmacological targeting of tumor dependencies in pancreatic cancer" 

Alvaro Cuesta-Dominguez, PhD in Physiology & Cellular Biophysics  
Mentor: Stavroula Kousteni, PhD 
Project: "Unraveling the pathogenic and therapeutic impact of Tenascin X matricellular protein in transformation of myelodysplasia to acute myeloid leukemia" 

Pamela Graney, PhD, MS, BS in Biomedical Engineering
Mentor: Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, PhD 
Project: "Modeling Breast Cancer-Induced Perturbations to Hematopoiesis in Engineered Bone Marrow " 

Johannes Melms, MD in Medicine-Hematology & Oncology
Mentor: Benjamin Izar, MD, PhD  
Project: "Dissecting the impact of genomic variants on hallmarks of T cell antitumor activity " 

Soonbum Park, PhD in Pharmacology
Mentor: Cory Abate-Shen, PhD
Project: "Investigating Novel Mechanisms and Treatments for Metastatic Bladder Cancer" 

Jane Xu, PhD student in Medicine- Hematology & Oncology
Mentor: Aaron D. Viny, PhD 
Project: "Credential Stag2-mediated chromatin looping in myelodysplastic syndrome" 

TAM Paper of the Year

This award recognizes expectational research publications from Trainee Associate Members that are selected based on scientific merit and impact. The awardees receive a salary bonus of $500. 

Marie Hasselluhn, Postdoctoral research scientist in digestive & liver diseases
Project: "Tumor Explants Elucidate a Cascade of Paracrine SHH, WNT, and VEGF Signals Driving Pancreatic Cancer Angiosuppression" 

Patricia Ho, MD-PhD student in hematology & oncology 
Project: "The CD58-CD2 axis is co-regulated with PD-L1 via CMTM6 and shapes anti-tumor immunity" 

Connor Kinslow, Physician resident, PGY4 in radiation oncology
Project: "Association of MGMT Promoter Methylation With Survival in Low-grade and Anaplastic Gliomas After Alkylating Chemotherapy"

Zhiming Li, Associate research scientist in genetics & development
Project: "Asymmetric distribution of parental H3K9me3 in S phase silences L1 elements" 

Mengrui Liu, Postdoctoral research scientist in biomedical engineering
Project: "Inhalable extracellular vesicle delivery of IL-12 mRNA to treat lung cancer and promote systemic immunity" 

Thomas Savage, MD-PhD student in microbiology & immunology
Project: "Chemokines expressed by engineered bacteria recruit and orchestrate antitumor immunity"  

Travel Award

The travel awards have a value of up to $1,000, which is to be applied to costs related to attendance at a meeting at which the trainee is giving either a poster or platform presentation. 

Oluwaseyi Adeuyan, student in Roy and Diana Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons
Mentor: Larisa J. Geskin, MD
Project: "DISCRN: (D)ifferentiating (I)mmune (S)ignatures in (C)utaneous T-Cell Lymphoma and Atopic Dermatitis Through Integrative Single-Cell (RN)A Sequencing Analysis" 

Gizem Efe, Graduate student in graduate school of arts and sciences, Columbia University
Mentor: Anil Rustgi, MD, Irving Professor of Medicine; Director 
Project: "P53-R172H mutation confers gain-of-function properties and promotes metastasis in squamous cell carcinoma" 

Jin Qian, Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Medicine in digestive & liver diseases
Mentor: Timothy Cragin Wang, MD 
Project: "A CXCR4 partial agonist TFF2-MSA improves anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in advanced gastric cancer by selectively targeting PMN-MDSC" 

Lawrence Wu, Postdoctoral Clinical Fellow in Hematology & Oncology
Mentor: Ryan Moy
Project: "Comprehensive molecular and immunological characterization of early-onset esophagogastric cancer"