Meet the trainees and alumni of our K12 program.
Current Trainees

Joshua Drago

- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2020-Present
- 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-Present
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Jedd Wolchok
- Clinical Mentor: William Tap
- Project Title: Immune-checkpoint CAR T cell therapy for melanoma and small cell lung cancer

Michael Kinnaman

- Department: Pediatrics
- Training Period: 2020-Present
- Current Position: Special Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Christine Iacobuzio-Donahue
- Clinical Mentor: Julia Glade Bender
- Project Title: Tracking the Origins and Drivers of Metastatic Expansion in Osteosarcoma

Minsi Zhang

- Department: Radiation Oncology
- Training Period: 2020-Present
- 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

Ivan Kotchetkcov

- Department: Neurology
- Training Period: 2021-Present
- 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-Present
- 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 myeloms

Marie Will

- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2021-Present
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Charles Sawyers
- Clinical Mentor: Sarat Chandarlapaty
- Project Title: Functional and biologic consequences of GATA3 mutations in breast cancer

Yonina Murciano-Goroff

- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-Present
- Current Position: Instructor
- Laboratory Mentor: Piro Lito
- Clinical Mentor: Alexander Drilon/Bob Li
- Project Title: Combined next-generation RAS and AURKA inhibition for KRAS G12C mutant tumors

Salvador Alonso Martinez

- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-Present
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Lukas Dow
- Clinical Mentor: Leonard Saltz
- Project Title: Targeting regenerative reprogramming in colorectal cancer

Varun Narendra

- Department: Medicine
- Training Period: 2022-Present
- Current Position: Fellow
- Laboratory Mentor: Scott Lowe
- Clinical Mentor: Eytan Stein
- Project Title: Interrogating and exploiting TP53 alterations in ckAML
Alumni

Vinod Balachandran

- Department: Surgery
- Training Period: 2016-2019
- Current Position: Assistant 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 Level 1
- 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: Assistant Attending Level 1
- 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-Present
- 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: Instructor
- 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: Assistant Attending Level 1
- 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 Level 1
- 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 Level 1
- 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: 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