Accomplishments and Events

Virtual Research Experience - Summer 2020

The CPRIT Research Training Program at MD Anderson Cancer Center congratulates our  2020 CPRIT CURE Summer Undergraduate Research Students. These 69 outstanding young scientists engaged in 10 weeks of cancer research remotely under the mentorship of our dedicated faculty mentors. In addition to research, they learned the fundamentals of cancer biology and participated in journal club and professional and career development enrichment activities. This year’s cohort was selected from more than 550 outstanding applicants from around the nation and world. 

The COVID-19 pandemic greatly impacted many of the brightest undergraduate scientists of the next generation. Research laboratory closures and cancelled summer research programs left undergraduates minimal opportunities to gain the critical research experience needed to apply for graduate programs and develop as scientists. Based on our strong training program history and unwavering commitment to undergraduate research training, and supported by an outpouring of interest from our mentoring faculty and undergraduate scientists, CPRIT CURE Program leadership redesigned our summer program. This year, we provided quality research, mentoring, and enrichment activities for our 2020 cohort with a twist – it was accomplished 100% remotely. Our trainees were matched with research mentors across many diverse departments, and contributed to research at MD Anderson through projects covering many facets of cancer research, including D3CODE COVID-19 in Cancer projects.  We are grateful for the tremendous support from many institutional offices and our mentoring faculty, which allowed our program to re-emerge this summer as an innovative remote research program. We are also appreciative of funding from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT) via our Research Training Award (RP170067), as well as the graduate school, which supported modest research scholarship awards for our trainees.

We are proud to continue leading efforts to fulfil MD Anderson and Program missions to provide quality research training to our undergraduates, despite COVID-19-related adversity. We are confident that the impactful research, mentorship, and training provided by our program during this unprecedented time will help to positively shape the lives of our young scientists and encourage them to pursue careers in cancer research.

Fall 2019 Achievements

Congrats to Lidya Tadesse (2017, Beretta Lab) and Researching at University of Barcelona) and Akshay Jaggai (2016, J. Wang Lab) for being awarded 2019 Fulbright Research Scholar Awards. Lidya is currently doing her Fulbright research at the University of Barcelona and Akshay is at University of Bern. 

Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students - congrats to our alumni who presented at ABRCMS!
Llaran Turner (2018 Yu Lab & 2019 Chandra Lab)                            Anh Tran (2019 Calin Lab)

Spring 2019 Achievements

Congrats to our CPRIT CURE alumni who presented at AACR this year. A special congrats to Sasha Kyrysyuk (Watowich Lab) for placing first in the AACR Annual Meeting 2019 Undergraduate Caucus. We are so proud of you!

Congrats also to our many alumni who were accepted to fantastic graduate and medical programs around the country for Fall 2019!

Fall 2018 Achievements

Congrats to many of our outstanding 2018 CPRIT CURE Summer Undergraduate Research Program alumni! Their
abstracts have been accepted to present at:

Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students 2018
Binisha Karki (Overwijk Lab) - poster presentation                            Sasha Kyrysyuk (Watowich Lab) - oral presentation
Sheighlah McManus (Gandhi Lab) - poster presentation                  Eduardo Quesada Diaz (Gomez-Manzano Lab) - poster presentation
Diana Odhiambo (Faye Johnson Lab) - oral presentation                 Ariana Maleki (Lizee Lab) - poster presentation
Sanaz Ghotbaldini (Konopleva Lab) - poster presentation                Llaran Turner (Dihua Yu Lab) - poster presentation
Leah Salinsky (Tainer Lab) - poster presentation

2018 Fall Undergraduate Research Symposium (FURS) at UT Austin
Sheighlah McManus (Gandhi Lab) - poster presentation
Leah Salinksy (Tainer Lab) - poster presentation

We are so proud of you and of your amazing accomplishments!