Life in the Lab
The Ishak lab emphasizes collaborative team science with a strong commitment to the mentorship of trainees at all levels, ranging from undergraduate students participating in the National Institutes of Health-National Cancer Institute R25-supported Summer Program in Cancer Research (SPCR), one of the UT MD Anderson CATALYST programs and hosted by the Department of Epigenetics and Molecular Carcinogenesis, to The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences graduate students, to postdoctoral fellows. The lab is fully committed to successful trainee outcomes.
Grace Weber was an undergraduate student in the 2026 SPCR cohort. She was the overall winner of the SPCR Town Hall Elevator Speech Award, and 2nd place SPCR poster presentation winner for “Chronic Trp53 knockdown results indsRNA dysregulation and reduction in the type I IFN immune response.”
Carter Schrag was an undergraduate student in the 2025 SPCR cohort. Carter’s "elevator pitch talk," and accompanying abstract describing his research, "Pipeline Development of Multiplex Immunofluorescence-Guided Cell Segmentation for Spatial Transcriptomics,” was one of three competitively selected from the ~300 person CATALYST program to be given as a platform presentation to the entire institution.
Mackenzie Wienke, a The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences student, joined the Ishak lab in 2025. As a second-year, pre-candidacy student, she won a Poster Presentation Award at the 20th International p53 Workshop in Toronto, Canada (2026) for her poster, "Understanding p53-associated regulation of repetitive elements in High Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer."