Meet the trainees and alumni of our K12 program.
Current Trainees
Joshua Schoenfeld
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2024-Present
- Current Position: Instructor and Postdoctoral Fellow
- Clinical Mentor: Eileen O’Reilly
- Laboratory Mentors: Santosha Vardhana, Jedd Wolchok
- Project Title: Iron sequestration as a mechanism of immune evasion in pancreas adenocarcinoma
Chenyang Zhan
- Department: Radiology
- Training Period: 2024- Present
- Current Position: Assistant Attending, Assistant Member
- Laboratory Mentor: David A. Scheinberg
- Clinical Mentor: Michael Andrew Postow
- Project Title: Neoantigen Landscape Analysis and Target Selection for Personalized Immunotherapy Using Biopsy-Derived Tumor Organoids
Joshua Budhu
- Department: Neurology
- Training Period: 2024- Present
- Current Position: Assistant Attending L1
- Laboratory Mentor: Francesca Gany
- Clinical Mentor: Ingo Mellinghoff
- Project Title: A pilot study of the ICCAN intervention to increase treatment adherence in underserved patients with glioblastoma by mitigating socioeconomic barriers.
Christina Fong
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2024- Present
- Current Position: Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Anthony Daniyan
- Clinical Mentor: Ira Dunkel
- Project Title: Armored Chimeric Antigen Receptor T Cells for Pediatric Brain Tumors
Minna Lee
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2024- Present
- Current Position: Assistant Member
- Laboratory Mentor: Sarat Chandarlapaty
- Clinical Mentor: Monica Morrow
- Project Title: Understanding and overcoming endocrine therapy resistance linked to homologous recombination deficiency in breast cancer.
Yonina Murciano-Goroff
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-Present
- Current Position: Assistant Attending Level 1
- Laboratory Mentor: Piro Lito
- Clinical Mentor: Alexander Drilon/Bob Li
- Project Title: Combined next-generation RAS and AURKA inhibition for KRAS G12C mutant tumors
Varun Narendra
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-Present
- Current Position: Assistant Attending L1
- Laboratory Mentor: Scott Lowe
- Clinical Mentor: Eytan Stein
- Project Title: Interrogating and exploiting TP53 alterations in ckAML
Anupriya Singhal
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2023-Present
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Tuomas Tamella
- Clinical Mentor: Eileen O’Reilly
- Project Title: Interrogating Cancer Cell States Driving Resistance to KRAS inhibition in Pancreatic Cancer
Elizabeth Coffee
- Department: Neurology
- Training Period: 2023-Present
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Kayvan Keshari
- Clinical Mentor: Ingo Mellinghoff
- Project Title: A hyperpolarized MRI probe to guide treatment in glioma
Bill Diplas
- Department: Radiation Oncology
- Training Period: 2023-Present
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Agnel Sfeir
- Clinical Mentor: Nadeem Riaz
- Project Title: Targeting alternative lengthening of telomeres (ALT) in cancer
Alumni
Joshua Drago
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2020-2023
- Current Position: Assistant Attending Level 1
- Laboratory Mentor: Sarat Chandarlapaty
- Clinical Mentor: Shanu Modi
- Project Title: Development of rational biomarkers for next generation antibody-drug conjugates in breast cancer
Christopher Hackett
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2020-2023
- Current Position: Oncologist and Physician-Scientist, Weill Cornell Medicine
- Laboratory Mentor: Jedd Wolchok
- Clinical Mentor: William Tap
- Project Title: Immune-checkpoint CAR T cell therapy for melanoma and small cell lung cancer
Justin Jee
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2023-2024
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Sohrab Shah
- Clinical Mentor: Bob Li
- Project Title: Automated annotation for large-scale clinicogenomic models of patient outcomes
Michael Kinnaman
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2020-2023
- Current Position: Medical Director, Regeneron
- Laboratory Mentor: Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue
- Clinical Mentor: Julia Glade Bender
- Project Title: Tracking the Origins and Drivers of Metastatic Expansion in Osteosarcoma
Ivan Kotchetkov
- Department: Neurology
- Training Period: 2021-2024
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Michel Sadelain
- Clinical Mentor: Ingo Mellinghoff
- Project Title: Developing a CAR T Cell Therapy for Glioblastoma by addressing Antigen Heterogeneity
Urvi Shah
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2021-2024
- Current Position: Assistant Attending Level 1
- Laboratory Mentor: Marcel Ven Den Brink
- Clinical Mentor: Alexander Lesokhin
- Project Title: Characterizing the effects of a pilot plant-based dietary intervention in overweight/obese patients with monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance and smoldering multiple myeloma
Minsi Zhang
- Department: Radiation Oncology
- Training Period: 2020-2023
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Andrea Ventura
- Clinical Mentor: Nancy Lee
- Project Title: Role of miRNA activity in Tumor and Normal Tissue Response to Radiation
Salvador Alonso Martinez
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-2023
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Lukas Dow
- Clinical Mentor: Leonard Saltz
- Project Title: Targeting regenerative reprogramming in colorectal cancer
Vinod Balachandran
- Department: Surgery
- Training Period: 2016-2019
- Current Position: Associate Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Steven Leach
- Clinical Mentor: Jedd Wolchok
- Project Title: Combining neoantigen vaccines with PD-1 blockade in pancreatic cancer
Paul Romesser
- Department: Radiation Oncology
- Training Period: 2016-2019
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Scott Lowe
- Clinical Mentor: Chris Crane
- Project Title: Preclinical functional genetic mouse model to study novel medical countermeasures to protect against radiation enteritis
Barbara (Gila) Spitzer
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2016-2019
- Current Position: Section Chief, Pediatric BMT Hackensack Meridian Health
- Laboratory Mentor: Ross Levine
- Clinical Mentor: Eytan Stein
- Project Title: Characterizing transcriptional and epigenetic signatures induced by FLT3 activation to rationally design targeted therapies for FLT3/ITD AML
Simone Krebs
- Department: Radiology
- Training Period: 2016-2020
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Steven Larson
- Clinical Mentor: Heiko Schoder
- Project Title: Developing non-immunogenic, sensitive, and specific tracking strategies for monitoring clinical cell therapy trials
Anthony Daniyan
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2017-2020
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Renier Brentjens
- Clinical Mentor: Jae Park
- Project Title: The Development of a CD19 Targeted Chimeric Antigen Receptor T cell Secreting an Immune-Modulating Cytokine for the Treatment of Relapsed and Refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
Samuel Funt
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2017-2020
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Jedd Wolchok
- Clinical Mentor: Dean Bajorin
- Project Title: Establishing an immunocompetent, carcinogen-induced mouse model as a platform for immunotherapy development in bladder cancer
Michael Ortiz
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2017-2020
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Alex Kentsis
- Clinical Mentor: Paul Meyers
- Project Title: Prohibitin is a prognostic marker of treatment failure and therapeutic target to block chemotherapy resistance in Wilms’ tumor
Jeremy Setton
- Department: Radiation Oncology
- Training Period: 2017-2020
- Current Position: Assistant Attending Level 1
- Laboratory Mentor: Simon Powell
- Clinical Mentor: Matthias Karajannis
- Project Title: The CXCR4-CXCLevel 12/beta catenin/Cyclin D1 axis - a potential therapeutic target in Neurofibromatosis type 1 associated Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors
Sameer Farouk Sait
- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2018-2021
- Current Position: Assistant Attending L1
- Laboratory Mentor: Luis Parada
- Clinical Mentor: Nancy Lee
- Project Title: Combined inactivation of Rb & p27kip1 mediates a novel mechanism of antiandrogen resistance
Kamal Menghrajani
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2018-2021
- Current Position: White House Fellow, The White House
- Laboratory Mentor: Ross Levine, Mike Berger
- Clinical Mentor: Martin Tallman
- Project Title: The Impact of TP53 Loss on the Classification and Prognosis of Myeloid Malignancies
Steven Maron
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2019-2022
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: David Solit/Nikolaus Schultz
- Clinical Mentor: Yelena Janjigian
- Project Title: Pembrolizumab/Trastuzumab: overcoming intrapatient heterogeneity in esophagogastric cancer
Fresia Pareja
- Department: Pathology
- Training Period: 2019-2022
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Jorge Reis-Filho
- Clinical Mentor: Hannah Wen
- Project Title: Defining the oncogenic impact of genetic alterations in endosomal pH regulators and their implications in resistance to targeted therapies
Wungki Park
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2019-2022
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue
- Clinical Mentor: Eileen O’Reilly
- Project Title: Immunologic Synthetic Lethality in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) with Homologous Recombination Deficiency (HRD)
Eugene Pietzak
- Department: Surgery
- Training Period: 2019-2022
- Current Position: Assistant Attending
- Laboratory Mentor: David Solit
- Clinical Mentor: Dean Bajorin
- Project Title: Truncating ARID1A mutations as a therapeutic target in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer
Jimmy Zhao
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2020-2022
- Current Position: Global Development Medical Director and Baselga Scholar AstraZeneca
- Laboratory Mentor: Charles Sawyer
- Clinical Mentor: Dana Rathkopf
- Project Title: Investigate the cell of origin and the molecular mechanisms of lineage plasticity in neuroendocrine prostate cancer
Marie Will
- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2021-2024
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Charles Sawyers
- Clinical Mentor: Sarat Chandarlapaty
- Project Title: Functional and biologic consequences of GATA3 mutations in breast cancer