Nikhil Mankuzhy, MD

I was born and raised in Metro Detroit. I attended the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and studied neuroscience. After graduating college, I discovered my interest in cancer care as a scribe in ocular oncology at the Kellogg Eye Center. During this time, I also conducted clinical research on precision medicine applications in pediatric oncology at Michigan Medicine. As a medical student at the Oakland University William Beaumont School of Medicine, I worked on clinical research projects with Beaumont Hospital’s Department of Radiation Oncology in lung, breast, and prostate cancer. I returned to Ann Arbor for my transitional year internship at St. Joseph Mercy Hospital before finally leaving Michigan to join the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at MSK. While living in New York City, I enjoy playing pickup basketball and trying new restaurants.

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Edward “Christopher” Dee, MD

I grew up in Manila, Philippines, and Vancouver, Canada, and attended Yale University, where I majored in molecular biophysics and biochemistry and studied proteins involved in DNA repair. Thereafter, I worked in global health and health policy in New Delhi, Manila, and Washington, D.C. I attended Harvard Medical School, where my interest in oncology grew. I conducted prostate cancer clinical research with Dr. Paul Nguyen and Dr. Anthony D’Amico at the Dana- Farber Cancer Institute. I also explored health services research, with a focus on disparities, financial toxicity, and oncology care delivery in lower-middle-income countries. This work has led to collaborations with a global team of researchers studying healthcare delivery and cancer disparities, allowing me to combine my interests in oncology and health equity. I completed my transitional intern year at MSK. I am an avid fan of Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry, Marc Chagall’s paintings, and Albert Camus’ prose.

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Kaitlyn Lapen, MD

I grew up in the western suburbs of Chicago and obtained my undergraduate degree at Emory University, where I studied biology and human health. I then returned to Chicago to attend the University of Illinois College of Medicine. While in medical school, I developed an interest in oncology and participated in MSK’s Medical Student Summer Fellowship Program, where I studied the use of complementary therapies for patients with cancer. Between my third and fourth years of medical school, I returned to MSK to complete a yearlong research fellowship in the Department of Radiation Oncology. Under the mentorship of Dr. Erin Gillespie, I investigated the development and implementation of a remote symptom reporting tool for patients undergoing breast radiation, in order to optimize symptom management. I completed my transitional-year internship at MSK prior to joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program. While living in New York, I enjoy exploring various museums, spending time in Central Park, and searching for antique furniture and home decor.

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Roshal Patel, MD

I was born and raised in Albany, New York. A true upstate New Yorker, I pursued undergraduate studies in health policy and biology at the University of Rochester and later attended medical school at Albany Medical College. During medical school, I spent a year at MD Anderson Cancer Center under the mentorship of Dr. Jim Welsh, studying strategies to combine radiation with immune therapies to improve outcomes in patients with metastatic cancers. Throughout my career, I have worked with several other teams focusing on research disciplines, including palliative radiation therapy, pediatric brain tumor genomics, and disparities in cancer clinical trials. Prior to joining Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, I completed my preliminary-year internship in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. In my free time, I enjoy live music, sports, hiking, and skiing.

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Alex Goglia, MD, PhD

I grew up in Edina, Minnesota, and attended Gonzaga University, where I studied evolutionary biology and philosophy as an undergraduate. After deciding to pursue medicine, I completed a master’s degree at Columbia University and then spent two years working in Dr. Simon Powell’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK), studying DNA repair and developing small molecule radiosensitizers. I then joined the Rutgers/Princeton MD/PhD program, where my doctoral research, funded by the NCI F30, was completed at Princeton University in the laboratory of Jared Toettcher. There, I used synthetic biology tools to study how cells use time-varying dynamics of Ras/Erk MAPK signaling activity to encode information and inform proliferative cell fate decisions. During my PhD training, I also co-founded a biotech company developing proteins whose enzymatic activity can be controlled using precise wavelengths of visible light. After graduation, I completed a transitional-year internship at MSK before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program, where I hope to continue studying how cell fate decision networks become corrupted in cancer. In my free time, I enjoy live music, basketball, eating every kind of food, and fishing (now in Central Park).

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Yuzhong “Jeff” Meng, MD, PhD

I grew up in Nanjing, China, and attended Williams College, where I majored in chemistry and math. In my undergraduate career, I used polymer physics models and computer simulations to study the free energy of small RNA–mRNA binding with Daniel Aalberts. After a gap year of research, I joined the Harvard/MIT MD/PhD program, where I worked with Rameen Beroukhim to identify the genomic correlates of outcome in tumor-infiltrating lymphocyte therapy for metastatic melanoma. I completed my transitional-year internship at Cambridge Health Alliance before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

Alexandra Dreyfuss, MD, MS

I grew up in Miami, Florida and attended the University of Pennsylvania for college, where I majored in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and designed production processes for cancer therapeutics. I remained at Penn for medical school where my love for the nuanced and compassionate relationship between a cancer patient and physician first developed. My interest in oncology deepened through my research in the oncologic applications of molecular imaging under the mentorship of Dr. Abass Alavi, and more broadly through my research in clinical trial design and novel radiation technologies. While in medical school I also completed a Master’s of Science in Translational Research, investigating radiation-induced cardiotoxicity as an NIH TL1 grant recipient in the lab of Dr. Costas Koumenis. I completed my transitional year internship at MSKCC where I experienced the value of coordinated, multidisciplinary cancer care and I am excited to continue my training in the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Chengcheng Gui, MD

I grew up in Winnipeg, Canada, before studying chemical and biological engineering as an undergraduate at Princeton University. There, I developed an interest in computational modeling of biophysical systems. During my medical training at Johns Hopkins University, I assisted Dr. Kristin Redmond in completing several clinical studies of radiation therapy for brain and spine tumors. Some of our work took advantage of machine learning techniques for predicting clinical outcomes. I completed a preliminary year in internal medicine at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at MSK.

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Christopher Jackson, MD, MS

I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. I attended college at Stanford University where I majored in bioengineering. I went to Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons for medical school. During medical school, I took two years to obtain a Masters in Biomedical Sciences working in Ranjit Bindra’s lab at Yale University. My thesis explored DNA repair deficits in glioblastoma. Before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program, I completed a transitional year internship at MSK.

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Gustav Cederquist, MD, PhD

I grew up in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania and attended Harvard University. While at Harvard, I conducted research on the genetics of neocortical development and received a Bachelor’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology. I then joined the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program, where I worked under the mentorship of Dr. Lorenz Studer to develop novel pluripotent stem cell-based approaches to dissect the cellular heterogeneity of the human brain. After my PhD, I joined the lab of Dr. Adam Schmitt at Memorial Sloan-Kettering working to identify genetic determinants of radio-resistance in metastatic disease. I completed a transitional year internship at Memorial Sloan-Kettering before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Matthew McMillan, MD

I was born and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina and attended the University of South Carolina, where I received my undergraduate degree in History and German. After deciding to pursue a career in medicine, I moved to Philadelphia, where I completed a pre-health post-baccalaureate program at the University of Pennsylvania. While completing my premed coursework, I worked as a Harrison Surgical Scholar at Penn Surgery under the mentorship of Charles Vollmer. During this time, I had the opportunity to learn about radiation oncology through collaborating on research projects with Eric Ojerholm and Charles Simone. I then attended medical school at the University of Michigan and worked in the laboratories of Theodore Lawrence and Meredith Morgan, where I studied targeting the DNA damage response to sensitize pancreatic cancers to immune checkpoint blockade. I completed a transitional year internship at MSK prior to joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Sana Raoof, MD, PhD

I grew up in Long Island, New York and attended Harvard College, where I studied Chemistry and Physics. In my undergraduate career, I studied the statistical mechanics of protein folding and worked on passing anti-tobacco legislation. My interest in reducing the burden of tobacco-related diseases led me to the MD-PhD program at Harvard-MIT (HST), where I studied the epigenetic basis of drug tolerance in oncogene-mutant lung cancers and designed drug combinations to block the evolution of resistance. My concurrent work in the anti-tobacco space shifted my post-graduate scientific interests from drug development for late stage cancers to early detection and prevention of cancer. During my preliminary year in medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, I published and presented widely on the topic of liquid biopsy for cancer screening. I hope to conduct research on early detection technologies at Memorial Sloan Kettering as a radiation oncology resident.

David Billing, MD, PhD

I grew up in Gales Ferry, Connecticut and attended Harvard University where I received my bachelor’s degree in molecular and cellular biology. I then entered the MD/PhD program at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. For my doctoral thesis in Richard Baer’s lab, I studied the role of the BRCA1/BARD1 heterodimer in DNA damage response and breast cancer pathogenesis. I completed a transitional year internship at MSK prior to joining the radiation oncology residency program.

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Bill Diplas, MD, PhD

I grew up in Blacksburg, Virginia. I attended Johns Hopkins University for my undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering. During and after college, I did genetics and biomedical engineering research at Johns Hopkins and then at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) through the Whitaker Fellowship. I then joined the MD/PhD program at Duke University School of Medicine, where I did my doctoral research on cancer genomics and neuro-oncology, funded by the NCI F30, in the laboratory of Hai Yan. My work focused on identifying novel genomic alterations in glioblastoma, understanding their roles in telomere maintenance, and developing sensitive mutation-detection tools with applications in liquid biopsy. I completed a transitional year internship at MSK prior to joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Jennifer Ma, MD

I grew up on Long Island, New York and completed my undergraduate studies at Fordham University, where I majored in biology and completed my honors thesis on the genetic regulation of cell differentiation. I conducted clinical research on hepatobiliary cancers at MSK before attending medical school at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. During medical school, I completed a two-year graduate research fellowship in the laboratory of Simon Powell at MSK, where I developed an interest in genetic drivers of radiotherapy response. My work focused on the role of DNA repair genes as biomarkers of radiosensitivity for the development of targeted therapies. I completed my transitional year internship at Amita Saint Francis Hospital in Chicago and am excited to join the Radiation Oncology program at MSK.

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Patricia Santos, MD

I was born in Manila, Philippines but grew up in Brooklyn, New York. I attended Brooklyn Technical High School before pursing undergraduate studies at Brown University, where I studied neuroscience and history. I obtained my master’s in biomedical sciences at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, studying gene-environment interactions at the gut-brain interface. I later discovered my love for multidisciplinary cancer care as a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Inspired by time on the wards, I began research at MSK, using advanced imaging to monitor tumor response to radiotherapy. Meanwhile at Penn, under the mentorship of Neha Vapiwala, I studied the comparative effectiveness of proton versus photon therapy in mitigating toxicity in patients with prostate cancer. Additionally, I have been involved in a variety of research endeavors that encompass my broad interests in health services, medical education, ethics, and end-of-life care. I completed my transitional year internship at MSK and am excited to continue my training in the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Reith Sarkar, MD

I was born and raised in Orange County, California and attended college at Washington University in St. Louis, where I majored in biomedical engineering. I then attended medical school at the University of California, San Diego, where I was first introduced to the field of radiation oncology. During medical school, I developed an interest in cost-effectiveness, health services, and big data research. Between my third and fourth years of medical school I obtained a master’s degree in clinical research, and under the mentorship of James Murphy and Brent Rose, completed a thesis on the role of finasteride in delaying the diagnosis of prostate cancer. Before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at MSK, I completed a transitional year internship at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego.

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Deborah Smith, MD

Born in Manhattan and raised in Connecticut, I attended Brown University where I studied classics and molecular biology. Afterward, I moved to Washington, DC, where I worked as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute investigating regulatory links between chromatin, telomere protection, DNA replication and genome integrity. I returned to New York for medical school at Columbia University, where I also completed a master’s of science and Dean’s Research Fellowship conducting clinical and translational research on primary and metastatic brain tumors. Following a transitional year internship at MSK, I joined the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

Morgan Freret

Born and raised in Northern California, I majored in biology at Stanford University. My interest in medicine developed after I joined a Stanford biochemistry laboratory that was investigating a signaling pathway important in the pathogenesis of a type of pediatric brain tumor. I completed my MD/PhD training at Harvard Medical School. My PhD research characterized molecular and functional subtypes of brain serotonergic neurons in mice. I joined the Radiation Oncology Residency Program after my transitional year internship at MSK.

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Harper Hubbeling

I grew up in Austin, Texas, and got my undergraduate degree in biology from Haverford College in Pennsylvania, where I studied patrolling monocyte development. After college I worked at the University of Pennsylvania in an immunology lab investigating how immune cell subsets affect the intestinal microbiome. I then attended Harvard Medical School, where I did clinical research in thoracic oncology with Alice Shaw’s group. I completed a transitional year internship at MSK before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Emily Schapira Lebow

I grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and received my undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. I attended Harvard Medical School, where I spent a year doing clinical research under the mentorship of Helen Shih at Massachusetts General Hospital. I studied the integration of radiation therapy and immunotherapy, with a focus on treating people with cancer that has spread to the brain. I completed a transitional year internship at MSK before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program.

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Zachary Moore

I grew up in Texas and attended the University of Texas at Austin, where I studied biomedical engineering and designed nanoparticles for targeted drug delivery. After completing my undergraduate degree, I went to the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas to complete my MD and PhD. For my doctoral research I studied tumor-targeted DNA-damaging agents and combination treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer and lung cancer. Before joining the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at MSK, I completed a transitional year internship at Scripps Mercy Hospital in San Diego.

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Victor Ng

I was born and raised in San Jose, California, and obtained my bachelor’s degree from the University of California, Berkeley, where I majored in bioengineering. I then developed a significant interest in the pathogenesis and maintenance of cancer while studying leukemia stem cells at the University of California, San Francisco. My studies subsequently brought me to the University of Michigan, where I not only received a master’s degree in biomedical engineering but also learned lifelong lessons on the compassionate care of people with cancer as a hospice volunteer. I traveled to New York for my medical studies at the New York University School of Medicine and then did a transitional year internship at MSK. I am grateful to be continuing my training in the Radiation Oncology Residency Program at MSK.

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Kathryn Tringale

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and attended Brown University, where I received my degree in biomedical engineering. Before attending medical school at the University of California, San Diego, I continued my undergraduate thesis work in brain computer interface clinical trials with the BrainGate group at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Throughout medical school, I was involved in a variety of research endeavors, including cost-effectiveness, clinical trials, and medical ethics. The thesis for my master’s degree in clinical research investigated the use of advanced diffusion imaging techniques as biomarkers for neurocognitive performance in people undergoing brain radiotherapy. Before coming to MSK, I completed my preliminary year internship in internal medicine at Kaiser Permanente in Los Angeles.

Peter Fan Zhu, MD

I was born and raised in Shanghai. I came to the United States for college at Washington University in St. Louis, where I majored in biomedical engineering and minored in electrical engineering and applied linguistics. I was in the Tau Beta Pi Engineering Honor Society and the Alpha Eta Mu Beta Biomedical Engineering Honor Society. I then received my medical degree from the University of Illinois School of Medicine. I completed my preliminary-year internship at St. Joseph Hospital in Chicago. I completed residency in Radiation Oncology at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital.  My research interests include proton therapy, radiation therapy in pancreatic and lung cancer, and sociodemographic determinants of cancer care and outcomes.

David Harris, MD

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and attended Auburn University, where I studied chemical engineering with an emphasis on biomedical applications. At the completion of my undergraduate studies, I was awarded a Gates Cambridge Scholarship to earn a subsequent Master of Philosophy at King’s College, Cambridge, in the United Kingdom. I afterward enrolled at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham (UAB), where I earned my MD. I completed my preliminary internal medicine internship at MedStar Washington Hospital Center before returning to UAB for my radiation oncology residency. In residency, I was actively involved with clinical research projects pertaining to CNS, lung, prostate, and gynecologic malignancies and have also been involved with medical organizations like the American Medical Association. I am passionate about radiation oncology and brachytherapy, and I am excited to further my training as a brachytherapy fellow.