The 2025 Junior Investigator Meeting

Chair: Nicole Mattson, UCSD

Introduced and Chaired by: Lucy Britto, Georgia Tech

Chair: Lucy Britto, Georgia Tech

• 10:00 - 10:10 - Kimya Karimi (City of Hope)- Addition of growth factor receptor targeting therapy to cell cycle inhibitor blocks dynamic resistance mechanisms and promotes durable growth control  

• 10:10 - 10:20 - Md Torikul Islam (UT Southwestern)- Human osteosarcoma metastasis is limited by oxidative stress

• 10:20 - 10:30 - Maayan Pour (NYU School of Medicine) - Cancer cells adapt to their environment along a robustness-proliferation axis

• 10:30 - 10:40 - Kshitiz Parihar (University of Pennsylvania) - Tissue-dependent mechanosensing by cells derived from human tumors 

• 10:40 - 10:50 - Kai Zhang (Northeastern University) - Video-rate two-photon microendoscopy using second harmonic resonance fiber scanning 

• 10:50 - 11:00 - Ashwin Bale (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) - Nanoscale infrared imaging for metabolic mapping in single-cells

• 11:00 - 11:10 - Phebe Havor (Moffitt Cancer Center) - Modeling ctDNA dynamics: Tracking Progression & Response in HPV-associated Anal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

• 11:10 - 11:20 - Sandhya Prabhakaran (Moffitt Cancer Center) - Evolutionary immunotherapy in NSCLC: identifying optimal dosing strategies in TIL therapy using agent-based modeling

Chair: Li-Ying Wu, UT Health, San Antonio

• 11:30 - 11:40 - Diviya Sinha (MIT) - Synergistic Adjuvancy Effect of Low-Frequency Ultrasound with Surfactant for Skin Immunization and T Cell Proliferation for Tumor Immunotherapy Applications

• 11: 40 - 11:50 - Ismail Erbas (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)- Physics-Guided Deep Learning Model for Depth and Lifetime Estimation of Subsurface Fluorescence Targets in Scattering Media

• 11:50 - 12:00 - Nicole Mattson (University of California San Diego)- Towards Adhesion Driven Cell State Homogenization

• 12:00 - 12:10 - Priyanka Karmokar (St. Jude Children's Research Hospital) - Intermittent Hypoxia-Induced CXCR2 Signaling Promotes Hepatoblastoma Progression in the Neonatal Liver 

• 12:10 - 12:20 - Delan Hao (Northwestern) - Super-resolution microscopy quantified mitochondrial morphological alterations 

• 12:20 - 12:30 - Jacob Gagnon (Northeastern) - Quantifying T Cell Infiltration into 3D Tumor Constructs Following PINC-Enhanced Photoimmunotherapy

• 12:30 - 12:40 - Seung-Hyun Ko (University of Pennsylvania) - PD-1 nanoclustering as a mechanism potentiating EV-mediated suppression of T-cells

• 12:40 - 12:50 -  Stephanie Monson (University of Pennsylvania) - A multiscale, biophysical basis of nanocarrier immunogenicity

Chair: Anna Kolarzyk, Cornell

• 9:00 - 9:10 - Sharvari Kemkar (University of Pennsylvania)- Multiscale modeling framework to study effect of heterogeneity on chemotherapy response in Wilms tumor.

• 9:10 - 9:20 - Amit Verma (Albany Medical College) - Fluorescence lifetime FRET imaging reveals spatial heterogeneity of antibody-HER2  engagement in breast cancer models 

• 9:20 - 9:30 - Marcus Kelly (University of California San Diego) - Identifying multigenic systems under selection in the tumor genome

• 9:30 - 9:40 - Ehsan Aalaei (Rice) - MediaMaxxing: Culture of Prostate Cancer Cells Under Normoxic and Hypoxic Conditions Using Bovine Platelet Lysate as an Alternative Growth Supplement

• 9:40 - 9:50 - Rosalyn Sayaman (University of California San Francisco) - Heritable germline variants and immune-lipid metabolic drivers of the tumor microenvironment: Pan-Cancer Immune Subtypes, Outcomes, and Disparities

• 9:50 - 10:00 - Parker Stevenson (Johns Hopkins) - Right place, wrong time: Triple-negative breast cancer invasion repurposes hybrid E/M gene signature from pubertal development

Chair: Kimya Karimi, City of Hope

• 11:30 - 11:40 -  Aakash Saha (Columbia) - Proteome-wide prediction of interactions between structured domains and peptide motifs reveals functionally coherent sub-networks

• 11:40 - 11:50 - Mollie Harrison (UT Austin) - Glioblastoma metabolism is altered by unique biophysical niches present in the tumor microenvironment

• 11:50 - 12:00 - Ishita Dasgupta (Illinois Institute of Technology)- Colon Organoids on-a-Chip to Study the Influence of Bile Acids on Gut Bacterial Colonization  

• 12:00 - 12:10 - Bianca Xue (Columbia) - Decoding Tumor-Immune Crosstalk in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma by Network-based Spatial Transcriptomics Analysis

• 12:10 - 12:20 - Mayuri Dutta (University of Wisconsin-Madison)- Spatial Heterogeneity in the Omental Adipose Microenvironment Drives Invasion in High-Grade Serous Ovarian Carcinoma

• 12:20 - 12:30 - Lijuan Sun (Johns Hopkins) - Dormant Breast Cancer Cells Evade Immune Control and ER Stress to Drive Recurrence

• 12:30 - 12:40 - Alice (Yu-Lan) Kao (Washington University in St. Louis)- Dynamics of the tumor immune environment across organs in primary and metastatic pancreatic cancer 

• 12:40 - 12:50 - Arun Asif (Albany Medical College) - Iron Dysregulation Drives ECM Remodeling to Promote TNBC Invasion

• 12:50 - 1:00 - Yaqoob Ali (Houston Methodist Research Institute)- The Role of Platelets in Determining Biophysical Flow in the Premetastatic Niche

Chair: Ruyi Gong, Northwestern

In this session, you will join a series of breakout sessions for ice breakers and peer-to-peer professional development chats. 

Each breakout room will include a max of 5 people and will last for 10 minutes.

Ice Breaker: Introduce yourselves with your name, institution, and a fun fact!

Then use these guided prompts to start a discussion, but feel free to ask any questions you might have and get feedback from fellow Graduate Students, Postdocs and Early Career Faculty!

Sample Prompt Questions:

• How did you find your postdoc?
• What was your postdoc experience?
• If you have a fellowship, could you share your fellowship experience?
• What are you looking for in a postdoc program?
• What was the job search / application process like?
• Looking back, what skills were most important transitioning from PhD to Postdoc, Postdoc to Faculty?

But don't feel limited here - you know what will help you best!